14 Gorgeous & Easy Ways to Use Temporary Wallpaper for a Dramatic Effect

DIY a Backsplash

If you’ve never used peel-and-stick wallpaper before, this is the easiest way to bring some color to your kitchen. A DIY backsplash is a great beginner-friendly project—all you need to do is make sure your application is level and smooth out any bubbles that pop up. If you mess up, simply peel off the panel and reapply.

Level Up Your Stairs

Peel-and-stick wallpaper can have a big impact even on small spaces. Lifestyle blogger Jodi Lozauskas wanted to add a pop of color to her lake house stairs, and after considering painting them, she saw others post DIY staircases made with tiles. She figured she could get the same effect much easier with wallpaper.

“The great part is, if it doesn’t last or I change my mind or I don’t like it, it’s not permanent,” she says.

Lozauskas started out with one step. After seeing how great the paper held up to rain and wear-and-tear, she finished the project a few months later.

Revamp Your Furniture

When interior designer Michelle Harrison-McAllister found a high-end dresser with a brass finish front, she was awe-struck...and without the $6,000 budget to cover it. So she recreated the look with peel-and-stick wallpaper and a dresser from IKEA.

She measured every drawer, cut templates from Kraft paper, and used them as guides for adding brass wallpaper. The result: the stylish, unique look of her original find, for a fraction of the cost. And (bonus!) by peeling off the brass and applying a new pattern, the dresser’s style can be changed in a flash.

Create Faux Windows

If you have a room with no windows, Harrison-McAllister has an easy fix: make your own. Using a tropical peel-and-stick wallpaper, she measured and cut the print to look like window panes, then framed each in moulding. 

“With.. everybody being sequestered, if you’re in a tucked room like that, you want to feel like you at least have some windows or the outdoors,” she says. “You want to have something visual that’s stimulating.”

Stick It to the Ceiling

Think beyond walls...and stick your wallpaper to the ceiling. It’s a totally unexpected way to add depth and dimension to your room, and it looks completely mesmerizing. But fair warning—you might not be able to resist spending hours lying on the floor when your ceiling is this gorgeous.

Craft a Cozy Nook

Real talk: who doesn’t want a cozy reading nook? Lifestyle blogger Katie Lamb built exactly that in her daughter’s room using an extra closet, a few two-by-fours, plywood, and (of course) peel-and-stick wallpaper.

Lamb says she opted for the peel-and-stick backing rather than painting the wall to make the space more eye-catching and girly. Plus, as her daughter gets older, the wallpaper is easy to remove and replace with another, more sophisticated print.

Line Your Drawers

When home decor designer Candace Glover saw wallpaper lining drawers in her boss’ house, she knew she had to do it too. She measured each drawer in her RV (twice!), cut the wallpaper, and stuck it down. She even added the design to her refrigerator to match!

Glover says for a smaller space like drawers, you can use a credit card to smooth the paper and remove any bubbles. But if you’re working large-scale, you’ll want to invest in a wallpaper smoothing tool.

Upgrade a Kitchen Island

You know how one simple facelift can totally change the look of a space? Stylist Laura Goodwin discovered just how powerful peel-and-stick wallpaper can be when she used some to cover up the dark navy laminate of her kitchen island. The result is a gorgeous gathering space.

“It is honestly one of the most easy DIYs I have ever done,” she says. “After I decided on the design I wanted, Minnie and Me Interiors custom cut the wallpaper to size for me. All I had to do was peel and stick. It’s that easy!”

Go Halfsies

Peel-and-stick wallpaper can be a no-brainer for lightening up small spaces and creating interesting corners of your home. This scallop look by Alicia Kim is eye-catching in all the right ways, even when only applied to half the wall!

Makeover a Closet

After creating a few accent walls with peel-and-stick wallpaper, Davis was itching to see what else she could do with the tool. When a client hired her to transform a closet in her new apartment, Davis saw her chance.

“[The client] was really eager to finally have a closet she felt was actually all her own,” she says. “She just wanted to make it special in that way. So I thought, what better idea than to use a fun wallpaper?”

After emptying and painting the closet, Davis revamped the space in a matter of hours. “The tricky part about doing it inside closets is that there are all these corners and tight spots,” Davis says. “There’s a lot of measuring and cutting out your exact pieces of paper.”

Dress Up a Dollhouse

Who says real houses are the only spaces that get to enjoy fun wallpaper? Use scraps from your last project to deck out a dollhouse or playhouse for your mini me. Whether you build the toy from scratch or just add wallpaper on something store-bought, you can’t go wrong with creating a one-of-a-kind look your kid’s little friends will envy. This version from Minnie and Me Interiors is lovely.

Style Your Cabinets

You don’t have to rip out your cabinets to refresh your kitchen—all you need is a little paint and wallpaper. This cabinet was brown and boring when DIY blogger Laurel Harry moved into her house, but with some TLC (a paint job and colorful tangerine print) it’s practically a work of art in her kitchen.

The method was as easy as taking out the shelves and sticking on the paper, and you can try this same method for a hutch or bookshelf, too!

Line the Room

After constructing three-quarter-high board and batten for her dining room, lifestyle blogger Jessica Brigham wanted to bring a fun, bohemian design to the space. Because she has a hard rule to not install traditional wallpaper in her bungalow (largely due to resale value), she turned to her go-to: peel-and-stick wallpaper.

It took about eight hours to wallpaper the entire room. The height of the board and batten was perfect for the wallpaper panel—it left her a few inches so she could sneak the wallpaper behind the board and batten so it would fill out the space seamlessly.

“Any of the cons you’d find in removable [wallpaper], you’d find also in traditional,” Brigham says. “But then there’s even more limitations as far as it doesn’t just come off the wall.…I have to be honest, I think it’s a gift from the design gods.”

Greet Guests With a Cute Entryway

If you have a little alcove by your door you don’t know what to do with, a colorful entryway instantly brings joy to your home. After all, if this is the first thing you see when you walk in, you can’t not smile. Paste it up on the wall or, if you have a larger coat rack or shoe trunk, use wallpaper to decorate those furnishings.