Wallpapering with OS Maps

[EACHANN AN DOIRE]

I'm planning to paper a wall using OS Landranger maps. Anyone else ever done this? Was it a success? What kind of paste did you use? Did you varnish it?

Any tips would be very welcome,

Cheers,

Alastair.

[Mal Grey]

I'm planning to paper a wall using OS Landranger maps. Anyone else ever done this? Was it a success? What kind of paste did you use? Did you varnish it?

Any tips would be very welcome,

Cheers,

Alastair.

I can't help you, other than to say, excellent plan. I remember, as a child, visiting another school where they'd done the whole of a 3 storey open stairwell with all the 1 inch OS maps and it looked brilliant. Also a friend, who lived in Dorchester, had done half of the south coast along one wall.

When I have a big enough wall, I'll be doing the same.

[Caberfeidh]

Be careful of which kind of varnish you might put on it; most varnishes are very highly flammable and you wouldn't want a large area of it in your home. Special flame-retardant varnishes are available. If there is a part of the map which is likely to suffer people poking their finger on it, then cover that part with clear perspex. There was a great big O.S. map on the wall of the Clachaig which showed Glen Coe and surrounding area. The part showing the Clachaig soon became worn out due to people poking at it saying "we are here" and so on.
I've been saving up old ship's navigation charts to wallpaper my boatshed/cabin once I get it built.

[Sgurr]

We did it with 1/2 inch maps but because of the curvature of the earth or something (maybe just something) the edges didn't exactly meet. A bit of bodging made them almost meet, but daughter always found it irritating that it wasn't perfect. We did it with 1/2 inch maps as we didn't want it to go right down to the floor and be obscured by furniture (i.e. our bed, as it was in the bedroom.) We used ordinary wall-paper paste. We didn't varnish it for the reason Caberfeidh gave. Alas, we never took a photo of it in situ and the people who bought our house ripped it off first thing and replaced it with roses according to my spies in the area. Good luck. It gave us hours of interest planning the next trip.


We had two opposing walls and Skye lived in an alcove.

[mrssanta]

I have not done it but always wanted to. However dilute PVA glue makes quite a nice and non flammable varnish on card and paper so worth a try. Make sure your wallpaper is well secured and dry. Dilute about 1:5 and apply by brush. I'd try it on a small area first.

[mmill]

We did this, but decided on a slightly different approach, to give some flexibility we glued the maps onto hardboard sheets then screwed them to the wall. One issue that we had is that the wallpaper glue caused the maps to stretch a bit. Otherwise it worked OK, and they have come down and some have been put back up.

[gaffr]

I was once in a flat in Edinburgh and the folks there had taken it a bit further and had the ceiling covered as well as the walls with OS maps....so I guess that you could lay in bed and plan out your route.
Maybe, with modern map coverings, to have them covered first but I am not sure what adhesive would have to be used.

[spiderwebb]

There are companies that will do a wallpaper of any area you choose based on OS mapping, in 1:50k or 1:25k. Might be a couple of hundred quid for a wall but you'd be sure of a good finish with no alignment issues, varnish etc.

[newbs52]

Craigdon Mountain Sports in Inverness has quite a large wall covered with OS maps - it's on the wall as you go up the stairs to the first floor. No idea how they did it but it looks really good - I always stop to look at it. Might be worth an email to them.

[severett81]

We did a wall with OS explorer maps of our local area - the Peak District. Used normal wallpaper paste on a very pale green wall and worked fine . Did a bit of a tester which was slightly see through initially but dried ok.

Only problem we had sounds like similar to issues as other people - getting the sodding maps to line up! Being very OCD with it, it was quite frustrating. Seemed like the OL versions stretched in a different way to the standard explorer maps. From a distance it's fine but you can notice close up and installing was particularly frustrating. We're going to redo it when we move fairly soon and try using thinner 'rolls' - not put the map up as a whole, but try and put them up like wallpaper so the small errors can be negated.

Following this thread with interest and will report back when we've had a crack at it!

[Sgurr]

O/S now do custom-made maps. it might be worth asking them if this extends to printing them on wall-paper strips rather than just making your house the centre or whatever.

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/shop/catalog/product/view/_ignore_category/1/id/9/s/custom-made-maps/


I have never investigated the option of house as centre as we would waste too much money on sea.

[EllyM]

We've got Skye on one wall in 1:50k - it was put on using wall paper paste, I believe. I think some faint pencil lines went on the wall to help line up the gridlines before hand. I do recall a lot of holding bits of map up while someone farted around with the spirit level.

[nigheandonn]

I've got two of the 'ordinary' custom maps, both for places where you're constantly walking off the edge of the map, rather than places that are particularly special to me (an orange map of the central lake district, and a pink map of Cowal).

They're nice, but printed differently - you can feel the contour lines if you run your finger over them - and tend to wear blank at the folds, so you'd have to be even more careful about not wearing away your favourite places!

[malrobb]

Hi,

I have not used them myself but found this online:

https://www.custom-wallpaper-printing.co.uk/custom-wallpaper-maps.html

I would imagine this would be an expensive option.


Mal

[Senja]

The Lanterne Rouge caff in Gifford has a blown up 1920s 1” map on their wall. They used a wallpaper printer.
My perfect wall covering would be orienteering maps.