Why the repeat matters
Patterned paper only looks right if every strip starts at the same place in the design as its neighbour. That means you can’t cut each length to the height of the wall plus trim; you cut it up to the next point where the design lines up. For a straight match that is a whole number of repeats. For a half drop, alternate strips sit half a repeat lower, so each cut stops half a repeat past a whole repeat. Offset matches follow the same idea with the distance printed by the maker.
Here the wallpaper calculator starts with a 64 cm half drop. Under the big figure you can read the cut length it arrives at, and how many such strips come out of one roll. That whole number is the step where large motifs get expensive: move the repeat, the match or the height and see when it changes.
Reading the chart
Below, one 4 × 3.5 m room on 53 cm Euro rolls is papered six ways: a plain paper and five real designs, taken from their makers’ pages. At 2.4 m nearly everything still gets three strips per roll, so the patterned papers all come to 10 rolls against 8 for the plain one, which gets four. Go up to 2.6 or 2.8 m and the long repeats fall to two strips per roll. If you’re torn between two designs for a tall room, compare them here first.
The same room, six patterns
A 4 × 3.5 m room with one door and one window, on 10.05 m × 53 cm rolls, 10 cm trim a drop. Each cell: the length of one drop, the drops one roll gives, and the rolls to buy.
| Pattern | 2.4 m walls | 2.6 m walls | 2.8 m walls |
|---|---|---|---|
| No pattern (free match)free match | 2.5 m · 4/roll · 8 | 2.7 m · 3/roll · 10 | 2.9 m · 3/roll · 10 |
| Anaglypta Kingston26.7 cm straight | 2.67 m · 3/roll · 10 | 2.94 m · 3/roll · 10 | 2.94 m · 3/roll · 10 |
| Anaglypta Westminster53.4 cm straight | 2.67 m · 3/roll · 10 | 3.2 m · 3/roll · 10 | 3.2 m · 3/roll · 10 |
| Morris & Co Strawberry Thief61 cm straight | 3.05 m · 3/roll · 10 | 3.05 m · 3/roll · 10 | 3.05 m · 3/roll · 10 |
| Graham & Brown Esther78 cm, offset 39 cm | 2.73 m · 3/roll · 10 | 2.73 m · 3/roll · 10 | 3.51 m · 2/roll · 14 |
| Sanderson King's Rose103.8 cm half drop | 2.59 m · 3/roll · 10 | 3.63 m · 2/roll · 14 | 3.63 m · 2/roll · 14 |
Repeats and matches from the makers' product pages, checked September 2026: Anaglypta Kingston, Westminster, Morris & Co Strawberry Thief, Graham & Brown Esther (offset match, 39 cm drop), Sanderson King's Rose. All on the same Euro roll here, so only the pattern changes.