Stairwells

How Much Wallpaper Do You Need for a Stairwell?

Updated: Aug 2026

A stairwell is one of the trickiest rooms in the house to wallpaper, and one of the hardest to measure well: the wall running alongside the stairs rakes upward at an angle, a half-landing or turn in the stairs often splits it into two different heights, and the whole thing is usually taller than any wall in a standard room. Search "stairwell wallpaper calculator" and most tools that come up still expect one flat height for the whole wall, which a raked stair wall simply doesn't have. Here's how to measure a stairwell properly and land on a roll count you can trust.

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Measure the raked wall to its tallest point

The wall running up beside a staircase rises at the same angle as the stairs, so its height changes continuously from the bottom step to the top. As with any sloped wall, measure to the tallest point the wall reaches and use that for every strip — you trim the excess off the short end once it's hung, rather than under-buying by measuring somewhere in the middle.

Split the stairwell at the landing

Most staircases have at least one half-landing or turn, and the wall above the landing is usually a different height again to the wall running alongside the stairs below it. Treat the landing wall and the stair-run wall as two separate sections with their own measurements, rather than averaging them into one number for the whole stairwell.

The stairwell is often the tallest wall in the house — plan access before you measure

A two-storey stairwell can run to 4-5m at its tallest point, well above what most people can reach without a proper ladder or scaffold tower. Confirm how you'll safely reach the top of the wall before you commit to a measurement — a number taken from halfway up a ladder, craning to see the apex, is exactly where a stairwell estimate tends to go wrong.

A tall wall wastes more per strip, even on a small pattern

Because each strip on a stairwell wall is unusually long, any offcut left over after trimming to the raked line is also long — and rarely reusable elsewhere in the job. Pattern repeat compounds this: a long strip has to accommodate more repeats of the pattern than a strip on a standard-height wall, so the waste from matching adds up over the wall's full height, not just at the top.

Order a buffer roll — re-accessing a stairwell mid-job is the worst case, not the best

If a stairwell wall runs short mid-hang, you're not just popping back to the shop — you're taking the access equipment down and setting it up again for one more strip. A stairwell is exactly the job where one extra buffer roll is worth ordering upfront, since the cost of running short is measured in hours of re-access, not just the price of the roll.

A dog-leg staircase needs three sections, not two

A single half-landing splits a stairwell into two height sections, but a dog-leg or quarter-turn staircase with two landings needs three or four. Each flight between turns has its own rake angle and its own tallest point, and the landing walls in between are usually a standard flat height. Measure every flight and every landing wall separately rather than assuming the two-section approach that covers a simple straight staircase — a dog-leg with an unmeasured third section is where the roll count comes up short.

Professional hanging quotes for a stairwell cost more than the paper itself

If you're getting a decorator to hang rather than DIY-ing it, expect the quote to run higher than a standard room of the same wall area — a stairwell needs scaffold tower hire or a specialist ladder rig, and the raked cuts and pattern matching around a turn take longer per strip. Get the roll count sorted first with an accurate measurement, then get quotes against that fixed number rather than a vague 'stairwell job' estimate, which tends to be padded for uncertainty. Once you have the roll count, see how to hang wallpaper in a stairwell

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Common questions

Is a stairwell wall measured the same as a sloped ceiling?

The principle is the same — measure to the tallest point and trim the short end — but a stairwell also usually needs splitting at the landing into two separate height sections, which most single sloped walls don't.

Can the planner handle a stairwell directly?

Yes — the room editor includes a stairwell template alongside rectangle, gable, sloped-ceiling and stepped-room shapes, so you don't have to approximate a raked wall with a straight one.

How many rolls does an average stairwell typically need?

It varies hugely with the wall's height and the number of landings, but a typical two-storey stairwell often falls in the 6-10 roll range for a standard 53cm-wide roll — closer to the top of that range with a larger pattern repeat.

Does the pattern need to match between the stair-run wall and the landing wall?

Not strictly — they're different planes at different heights, so a hard pattern match across the corner isn't usually achievable or expected. Keep the pattern the right way up and running in the same direction on both, but don't lose sleep over the repeat lining up exactly at the join.

Is hiring a professional to hang stairwell wallpaper worth it?

Often yes, given the access equipment and safety involved in working several metres up a raked wall. Get your own roll count first so you can compare quotes on a like-for-like basis, since access costs vary a lot between decorators.