High-quality wallcoverings offer a convenient, durable, and highly customizable way to protect and enhance your workplace’s walls. These stylish and protective coverings can be made from vinyl, fabric, and other materials, shielding your walls from abrasion, moisture, mold, and more. However, if your walls face some underlying issue, your wallcoverings can also conceal these emerging problems, preventing you from taking necessary action. This is why it’s important to not only properly prepare your walls prior to covering them but also to remain vigilant for potential signs of underlying wall damage.
With all that in mind, here are five signs of damage to look for underneath your commercial wallcovering applications.
You don’t have to paint your walls to give them fresh color. Both standard and specialty wallcoverings come in a variety of colors and patterns. Over time, however, you can expect your wallcoverings to lose some of their saturation – this is normal and can be mitigated with proper maintenance. If portions of your wallcoverings are quickly changing colors (e.g., gathering dark splotches), however, you may have a bigger problem on your hands. Such an unsightly transformation is usually the result of water damage or mold hiding between the wall and its coverings. It’s important to address these concerns as soon as possible to prevent the problem from worsening. Unfortunately, by the time moisture or mold seeps through your wallcoverings, the damage might be too severe for a quick fix.
A quality commercial wallcovering is meant to snugly wrap around your walls, leaving no gaps. This way, air, moisture, and contaminants cannot enter any spaces between your walls and their coverings. Even the smallest breach can lead to larger problems. If you notice that parts of your wallcoverings are bubbling up or pulling away from their underlying surfaces, you’ll want to find the root of the problem and quickly re-affix these coverings to prevent further peeling. As is the case with discoloration, moisture tends to be the main culprit of a wallcovering’s peeling.
If you don’t take a close look at your wallcoverings now and then, you might not notice the presence of tiny dots scattered across them. Unless your wallcoverings intentionally feature a speckled design, these particles are not a good sign. Dust would be the best-case scenario, as these particles are easy to remove from most wallcoverings. On the other hand, stubborn specks might point to mold growth underneath your wallcoverings. If this is the case, you have to exercise caution when removing wallcoverings so as to not release mold spores into the rest of the room. Professional commercial wallcovering installers can tackle safe removal before preparing your walls for fresh coverings.
You might not always be able to see signs of damage under your wallcoverings, but you might be able to feel whether something is off. Your covered walls should remain dry – if they feel damp, moisture might be encroaching on your walls from the other side or otherwise entering the gaps between your walls and their coverings (as mentioned earlier). Alternatively, your facility’s relative humidity levels might be too high due to poor insulation and/or climate control. Depending on the root cause and severity of this issue, you might need to simply dry out the air inside your facility or else address a water leakage issue behind your walls.
Finally, if you can’t see or feel a problem with your wallcoverings, you might smell one. A musty scent emanating from your walls may indicate mold growth and moisture intrusion. So, keep your nostrils open.
The right wallcoverings installed by the best in the business will stand the test of time and offer long-term wall protection. If you’re concerned about the state of your current wallcoverings or are seeking solutions other than paint to refresh and guard your building’s interior walls, PAINTech is here to help. We provide wallcoverings, window treatments, flooring, caulking, interior & exterior painting, and more – all under one roof. We proudly serve businesses in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, The Main Line area, Delaware, Maryland, and Northern Virginia areas. Contact us to learn more about all of the services that we offer!
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