Ingrain (or wood-chip) wallpaper is a decorating material. It consists of two layers of

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses, Feces#Other uses, herbivore dung, or other vegetable sources in water. Once the water is dra ...

with

wood fibre Wood fibres (also spelled wood fibers, see spelling differences) are usually cellulosic elements that are extracted from trees and used to make materials including paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemicall ...

in between; different kinds of ingrain

wallpaper Wallpaper is used in interior decoration to cover the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" to help cover uneve ...

are distinguished by the size and form of the fibre pieces. Ingrain wallpaper was invented by

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

pharmacist Hugo Erfurt in 1864; marketed by the company his grandfather founded, it was first used as a decoration for shop windows, but began seeing use as a wallpaper from the 1920s on as well. Ingrain wallpaper is the most commonly used type of wallpaper in Germany. It was also commonplace in the United Kingdom and Ireland from the

1960s File:1960s montage.png, Clockwise from top left: U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War; the Beatles led the British Invasion of the U.S. music market; a half-a-million people participate in the Woodstock, 1969 Woodstock Festival; Neil Armstrong ...

onwards, but has since fallen out of favour and become less common there, especially in new builds and more recent redecorations. At least since the noughties, both popcorn ceilings and ingrain wallpapers have had a reputation for being undesirably old-fashioned, especially if encountered together, and also hard to remove. People flipping houses in recent decades in these countries routinely removed both. Unlike popcorn ceilings, ingrain wallpapers never made major inroads in most other parts of the English-speaking world, especially America. Ingrain wallpaper has however remained much more popular in Germany and her neighbouring

continental Europe Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous mainland of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by som ...

an countries, where it is valued for its tendency to hide small dents and scuff marks, and hence is often retained and simply repainted during renovations. Ultimately ingrain wallpaper can become very difficult to remove once several coats of paint have been applied over the years, but whether that trade-off is widely accepted depends on the country and culture.

References

Paper products Wallcoverings German inventions 1864 introductions 1864 in the German Confederation {{industry-stub