Alcoves
Wallpaper for an Alcove: How to Measure and Cut It Right
An alcove — the recess either side of a chimney breast, or any similar wall niche — is narrow, often has a different depth to the wall it sits beside, and gets skipped or double-counted in a lot of rough estimates. It's also one of the most common places people choose to wallpaper on its own, without touching the rest of the room, which a whole-room calculator handles even worse. Here's how to measure and cut it properly instead of guessing.
Open the Wallpaper PlannerMeasure the alcove as its own wall section
An alcove has its own width, and often its own height if there's a chimney breast shelf or bulkhead above it. Measure it separately from the chimney breast face and the rest of the room wall, the same way you'd treat a hallway as a set of individual straight runs — one alcove, one measurement, not folded into a bigger total.
Keep the pattern matched across the chimney breast and both alcoves
If the wallpaper is meant to read as one continuous design across the chimney breast and the alcoves either side, the strips have to be planned together so the pattern lines up around each corner — cutting each section in isolation is the most common way a chimney-breast job ends up visibly mismatched at the corner seam.
Fitted shelving reduces usable alcove area
Built-in alcove shelving or a cupboard takes real wall out of the count, the same way a wardrobe does in a bedroom — measure only what will actually be visible once the shelving is back in place, not the alcove's full open dimensions.
Small alcoves waste more roll per strip than a full wall
Because an alcove is narrow, each strip cut for it uses only a fraction of a roll's width, and the rest is offcut. On a job with two alcoves and a chimney breast, expect a higher waste percentage than a similarly-sized flat wall — it's normal, not a sign the estimate is wrong.
The alcove's side walls (the return) are their own small strips too
Where an alcove meets the chimney breast at a right angle, that short return wall — often only a few centimetres deep — still needs its own strip if it's being papered rather than painted. It's easy to forget entirely because it's so narrow, but skipping it in the measurements means the plan is missing a wall, not just under by a small margin.
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See plans & pricingCommon questions
Should I paper the alcove and chimney breast in the same wallpaper?
Most jobs do, since it reads as one wall visually — but it's a design choice. If the alcove is going in a plain or contrasting paper instead, measure and order it as a completely separate section rather than trying to match a repeat that won't be shared.
Does an alcove need its own roll, or can it share with the rest of the room?
It draws from the same roll count as the rest of the room's wallpaper, as long as it's the same paper — the planner's cutting plan will place the alcove's strips on whichever roll has the offcut to fit them, rather than treating it as a separate purchase.
Is an alcove-only job worth using a full planner for, or is it simple enough to eyeball?
A single plain-paper alcove is often simple enough to eyeball, but as soon as pattern repeat, a shelving unit, or matching across a chimney breast is involved, the strip-level detail is exactly where a rough guess goes wrong — which is the situation this guide, and the planner, are built for.
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