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How To Cover a Switch Plate or Outlet Plate with Wallpaper

After wallpapering, its time to put the light switch cover plates back on the wall. Maybe they look fine as is, or maybe they glare against your lovely new wall covering. A nice touch is to cover light switch and outlet cover plates with a piece of matching wallpaper. We'll show you how to accomplish this easy task.

  1. Start with a scrap of wallpaper a couple inches larger than the cover plate. If your wallpaper has a regular pattern, it may look best if you align the scrap with the pattern around the switch. Select a piece that can be aligned with the pattern on the wall.

  1. Once you have a piece that can be aligned, place the cover plate on the wall, without the screws. Place the wallpaper over the cover plate and align it with the pattern on the wall. Once aligned, poke a pencil tip or small phillips head screwdriver tip through each of the screw holes in the cover plate.

  2. Remove the scrap and the cover plate.

  3. Apply spray adhesive, wallpaper paste or wet the adhesive on the wallpaper. Let the paper sit for a while to allow it absorb the adhesive and expand or contract. Otherwise, the paper might shrink or grow after it has been applied and will not look neat.

  4. Apply the scrap to the cover plate being careful to align each of the holes in the paper with the holes in the cover plate.

  5. Cut off the corners of the paper to roughly make an octagon. leave about 1/8" of an inch of paper out from each corner to cover the corners when the paper is folded over.

  6. Fold an edge over to the back of the cover plate, then fold over the corner followed by the next edge to secure the corner until all the edges have been secured.

  7. Cutting the openings can be done in a couple of ways. One is to simply cut the wallpaper out of the opening. In this case, use only a very sharp razor knife (a fresh blade) and it may work best to wait until the paper has dried. The other way is to cut an "X" in the opening and then fold the edges over to the back side through the opening.

  8. When installing the cover plate, don't over tighten the screws or they will twist the wallpaper. This is more likely to occur before the adhesive has dried.



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