Peel & Stick Wallpaper, Wall Panels & Tile Decals - Main Street

The box a pair of shoes came in is roughly the right size for most of the small things that pile up on a shelf, which is why so many of those boxes never make it to the recycling. Covering a cardboard box with contact paper turns that pile into storage you would leave in plain view, for a sheet or two per box. Below is how to cover a cardboard box with contact paper so the corners stay crisp, the lid still fits and the paper stays put, plus which boxes are worth the effort. Does contact paper stick to cardboard? Yes, and it holds better on some boxes than others. Self-adhesive paper grips smooth surfaces, so a shoebox or gift box with a coated, slightly glossy face is the easy case: the paper goes down flat and stays there. Raw corrugated cardboard, the brown kraft kind shipping boxes are made of, is more absorbent and slightly fuzzy, so the adhesive has less to grab. It still works, but press harder and test a corner first, as our surface-by-surface guide to what contact paper sticks to explains. One thing to know before you start: Main Street's guidance for its 11 by 16 inch wallpaper sheets names painted, sealed and finished surfaces, and cardboard is not on that list. The paper grips coated box board well, but the bond is a one-way trip. Peel it off a kraft box and the top layer of the cardboard often comes with it, so treat a covered box as covered for good. What you need to cover a box with contact paper Main Street's own how-to guide lists a measuring tape and pencil, a utility knife, a damp cloth and a smoothing tool. A box project adds a few things from the kitchen drawer. Self-adhesive sheets. The 11 by 16 inch wallpaper sheets cover 1.22 square feet each. A box the size of an adult shoebox, roughly 13 by 8 by 5 inches, takes about four sheets including the lid, but measure yours before you count. A utility knife, scissors and a straightedge. The knife for trimming against the box edge, the scissors for corner slits, the straightedge for cutting panels square. A smoothing tool or an old gift card for pushing air toward the edges and pressing paper into corners. A damp cloth. Cardboard holds dust, and dust is what makes edges lift later. Pattern matters more on a box than on a wall, because a box is small and you see the whole thing at once. A fine, all-over print such as Woven Stripe forgives a seam at the corner and reads as a set when several boxes line up on an open shelf. A large motif works too, as long as you plan where it lands on the lid. How to cover a cardboard box with contact paper, step by step Because the sheets are 11 by 16 inches, the cleanest method covers one face at a time and puts every seam on a corner, where the eye expects an edge anyway. Prep the box. Pull off tape and labels, press down lifted flaps and glue a loose corner if one has split. Wipe every face with a slightly damp cloth and let it dry fully. Measure each face, then add margins. For a side panel, measure its width and height. Add about half an inch to the width to wrap around one corner, and an inch top and bottom to fold over the rim and under the base. Write each measurement on the backing in pencil. Cut with the backing on. Lay the sheet face down, mark the panel on the backing and cut along the straightedge. Cutting before you peel is what keeps the edges straight. Apply the first long side. Peel back only an inch or two of backing. Line the panel up so the extra half inch overhangs one corner and the margins overhang top and bottom. Press the exposed strip down, then pull the backing away a little at a time while you smooth from the center outward. Turn the corner. Run the smoothing tool firmly into the corner so the paper creases on the edge, then fold the half-inch overhang onto the next face and press it flat. Cover the remaining sides. The next panel's cut edge sits right on the corner line, over that half-inch wrap. Work around the box this way until the last two wraps meet at the final corner. Fold the margins. At the bottom, snip a short slit at each corner, fold the long-side margins under first, then the short ones, like wrapping a gift. At the top of an open box, fold the margin over the rim and press it down inside. Our guide to covering a book with contact paper uses the same fold-and-tuck logic on a smaller scale, and the same rule applies here: cut generously, then trim. Corners, lids and handle holes: the three spots that go wrong Corners Most lumpy corners come from folding two layers of paper over each other at a right angle. The fix is a slit. Where a margin has to turn a corner, cut from the edge of the paper straight in to the corner of the box, fold one flap down, then fold the other over it. Each flap lies flat instead of bunching. For rounded box corners, and for inside and outside corners on furniture, see how to do corners with contact paper. Lids The lid is where a box can stop closing. Paper adds a little thickness, and a snug lid has no room to spare. Cover the lid top and its outer sides, but leave the inside of the lid rim bare so it still slides over the box. On a box that lives in a cubby, consider covering only the lid and the front face, which is all anyone sees. Handle holes Archive boxes often have cut-out handles. Cover straight over the hole, then from inside the box cut an X through the paper from corner to corner of the opening. Fold the four flaps through to the inside and press them down, so the cut edge ends up where fingers will not catch it. Lining the inside of a box, or a tray A lined interior is the detail that makes a box feel finished rather than disguised, and it is easier than the outside because nothing has to wrap. Measure the base and each inside wall separately, cut each panel a hair under size so it drops in without buckling, and press from the center outward. A keepsake box with a floral such as Block Print Floral inside the lid is a small, cheerful surprise every time it opens. These wallpaper sheets are paper, so keep lined boxes away from anything damp. The same method lines the base of a wooden tray, which is what the photo at the top of this article shows. For a tray that will see the occasional cup, Main Street's embossed foil craft sheet Very Crock N Roll is the one to reach for: its product page lists it as water-resistant and suited to functional crafts, which the regular wallpaper sheets are not. It measures 10 by 15 inches, so check the tray base against that before you order. Which boxes to cover, and which to leave alone Shoeboxes and gift boxes with a coated face. The best candidates: rigid, smooth and already box-shaped. A row of them in one print, something like Herringbone, reads as a matched set rather than a collection of leftovers. Kraft shipping boxes. Fine for a closet shelf once the flaps are taped flat, but press every edge firmly and expect a lighter grip than on a coated box. Boxes that need to fold flat again. Skip these. Paper across a fold line tends to crack or lift at the crease the first time the box collapses. Boxes going somewhere damp. Also skip. Main Street's guide lists moisture-exposed areas among the places to avoid for its wallpaper sheets, and a cardboard box under a sink will fail before the paper does. Once the boxes are covered, label them. A panel cut from a sheet of Chalkboard Classic and stuck to the front face takes chalk or a chalk marker and wipes clean when the contents change, which beats a strip of masking tape. For more small projects that use up a sheet or two, see our guide to craft wallpaper. Frequently asked questions Will contact paper stick to a cardboard box? Yes. Self-adhesive paper holds well on smooth, coated box board, the kind shoeboxes and gift boxes are made of. Raw corrugated kraft is more absorbent, so the grip is lighter; press firmly and test a corner first. Main Street's surface guidance names painted, sealed and finished surfaces, so a cardboard box is a project you do with that in mind. How do you cover a box with contact paper without bubbles? Peel only an inch or two of backing at a time and smooth from the center of the panel toward the edges as you go, so air is pushed out ahead of the adhesive. If a bubble is trapped after the panel is down, lift the nearest edge and relay it, or prick the bubble with a pin and press the air out through the hole. Can you cover a shoebox with contact paper? A shoebox is the ideal first project: rigid, smooth and small enough that about four 11 by 16 inch sheets cover the base and lid. Cover the lid top and outer sides but leave the inside of the lid rim bare so it still slides on, and put your seams on the corners, where the eye expects an edge anyway. How many sheets does it take to cover a box? Measure each face, add about half an inch on one side for the corner wrap and an inch top and bottom for folding, then see how many of those panels fit on an 11 by 16 inch sheet. A typical adult shoebox with its lid comes to about four sheets. Count before you cut, because offcuts rarely rescue a panel that came up short. Can you remove contact paper from cardboard? You can peel it, but the result is rarely tidy. On kraft cardboard the top layer of the board often comes away with the paper, and on coated board the surface can scuff. Think of a covered box as permanently covered. If you want a reversible look, cover only the lid, or slip a loose printed panel inside a clear box sleeve instead.

Somewhere in your closet there is probably the end of a roll of wrapping paper, too short for anything boxed and too pretty to throw out. Using wrapping paper as drawer liner is one of the oldest tricks for a reason: it costs nothing, it comes in endless prints, and it turns the inside of a plain drawer into something you actually enjoy opening. It also has real limits, and they show up within a few weeks if you ignore them. Can you use wrapping paper as drawer liner? Yes, with one condition: treat it as a loose liner, not a permanent one. Wrapping paper is made to fold around a box once and be torn off, so it is thin, it often has a curl from the roll, and it tears where a heavy object gets dragged across it. Under folded sweaters, scarves or linens, none of that matters much: nothing scrapes it, and when it gets tired you swap it in two minutes. Where it struggles is the busy drawer. Cutlery, tools and chargers slide and catch, and a thin sheet with nothing holding it down wrinkles toward the back within days. Our guide on how to keep shelf liner in place explains why loose sheets creep, and the same physics applies here. One more line worth drawing early: wrapping paper is not made for food contact. In a kitchen drawer, keep anything you eat in its own packaging or a container rather than sitting directly on the print. How to line drawers with wrapping paper so it stays flat A liner that looks deliberate comes down to fit. Here is the order that works. Empty and clean the drawer. Vacuum the corners, wipe the bottom with a barely damp cloth, and let it dry completely. Paper laid over damp wood will cockle. Make a template. Press a sheet of plain paper into the drawer, crease it along the inside edges, and cut along the creases. Old drawers are rarely square, and a template catches that before you cut the good paper. Flatten the wrapping paper. Roll it the opposite way for a minute, or lay it print side down under a few books overnight. A curl you ignore now will lift the front edge later. Trace and cut slightly small. Aim for about an eighth of an inch inside the template on every side. A sheet that fits exactly will buckle against the drawer walls. Back it if the paper is flimsy. This is the step most people skip. Wrap the print around a piece of thin card, such as poster board or an opened file folder cut to the template, and tape the overlap on the underside. You now have a stiff insert that lies flat, resists sliding and lifts out in one piece for cleaning. If you want it to stay put without a backer, a few small pieces of removable tape at the corners will help. Test the tape on a hidden spot first, because some adhesives leave a mark on raw or older wood. Scrapbook, parchment, tissue and newspaper: how the other papers compare Scrapbook paper Heavier than most wrapping paper and usually sold in 12 x 12 in squares, scrapbook paper suits small drawers, such as jewelry or desk drawers, and lies flatter on its own. The catch is size. A dresser drawer will need several squares butted together, so pick a small allover print where the seams disappear into the pattern. Parchment paper Parchment is paper with a silicone coating, which makes it slick and nonstick. That is useful in a kitchen drawer where crumbs collect, since you can lift the sheet and tip it into the bin. The same coating means most tape grips the top surface poorly, so cut it to fit snugly and let it rest. Tissue paper Tissue has almost no body and moves with every garment, so it is a wrap rather than a liner. If you are storing heirloom linens or a christening gown, museum textile guides commonly suggest unbuffered acid-free tissue around the fabric and a barrier layer between the textile and bare wood, though practice varies. For anything genuinely precious, ask a conservator rather than relying on a blog post, ours included. Newspaper Lining dresser drawers with newspaper is an old habit, and the paper least suited to the job. Newsprint is high in lignin, which library preservation guides link to yellowing and brittleness over time, and the ink can rub off onto hands and pale fabric. Use it as a template, not a liner. Where a loose paper liner beats a sticky one Some drawers are better off with loose paper, even with a self-adhesive sheet on hand. Raw wood drawer bottoms. Many dresser drawers have unfinished bottoms. Main Street lists sealed wood among the best surfaces on our how-to-use page, and unsealed wood is not on that list, so a loose liner is the gentler option there. Antique or borrowed furniture. If the piece matters to you, or belongs to someone else, anything that does not stick is the lower-risk choice. Drawers you redo often. A nursery dresser that changes with the season, or a craft drawer you rearrange every month, suits a liner you can swap without peeling anything. Our article on closet and dresser liners goes further into what a liner does for clothes in a dresser, if you are still deciding whether to bother. When a self-adhesive paper sheet is the better drawer liner Switch when loose paper starts working against you: a drawer you open many times a day, contents that slide, or a wrinkled liner that is the first thing a guest sees. A peel and stick paper sheet solves the sliding problem at the root, because the whole back is adhesive. Main Street's Classic Sheets are paper wallpaper sheets measuring 11 x 16 in, about 1.22 sq ft each, and the product pages list the application surface as painted, sealed and finished surfaces. That describes many kitchen drawers and plenty of newer furniture, but check what your drawer is actually made of first. A few practical notes from our own guide: Clean the drawer with a mix of 30% isopropyl alcohol and 70% water, then let it dry fully. If you painted the drawer recently, Main Street recommends waiting at least 4 weeks before applying. Have a utility knife and a smoothing tool ready. Peel back a few inches of backing, align the edge, and smooth as you go. Buy every sheet you need at once. Many of our 12-pack pages note that slight color variations can occur from the printing process. Sizing is simple. A drawer bottom up to 11 x 16 in takes one sheet. A 15 x 22 in kitchen drawer takes two, placed side by side. A 30 x 16 in dresser drawer takes three. If you want to see what different print scales look like inside a small box first, our piece on decorative drawer liners walks through pattern scale. For a drawer of soft knits, a lively print like Total Vibes gives the inside some personality. For a cutlery or junk drawer, a busy small-scale pattern such as Floral Sprinkles or Eucalyptus hides scuffs and seams. And if you like the calm of plain white parchment but want it to look finished, Carrara Marble reads clean without being blank. One limit to respect: Main Street's paper sheets belong in dry drawers. Our how-to-use guide lists areas exposed to moisture, such as bathrooms, showers and wet zones, among the places to avoid, so the drawer under a sink is not the spot for them. A middle path: keep the paper, upgrade the method You do not have to choose one approach for the whole house. Founder Jan McCallum is a classically trained oil painter, and painters learn early to decide where the eye lands first. The same idea works for a chest of drawers. Spend the self-adhesive sheets on the drawers you open daily, like the top dresser drawer or the utensil drawer, and use backed wrapping paper in the deep drawers of out-of-season clothes. A print like Peony Party in the drawers you show off, and the leftover wrapping roll in the ones you do not, is a perfectly sensible split. Frequently asked questions Is wrapping paper OK for drawers that hold clothes? Generally, yes. Folded clothes are soft and do not drag across the paper, so a loose wrapping paper liner holds up well in a dresser. Make sure the drawer is completely dry before you lay it in, flatten the curl first, and replace the sheet if it starts to tear. For heirloom or delicate textiles, ask a textile conservator about acid-free materials instead. How do you keep wrapping paper drawer liner from sliding? Give it some body. Wrap the paper around a piece of thin card cut to the drawer's template and tape the overlap underneath, so you have a stiff insert that lies flat. A few small pieces of removable tape at the corners also help, but test them on a hidden spot first, since some tapes mark raw wood. Is scrapbook paper good for lining drawers? For small drawers, it is one of the better household options. It is heavier than wrapping paper, so it lies flat more readily, and the usual 12 x 12 in squares fit jewelry, desk and vanity drawers neatly. Larger drawers need several squares, so choose a small allover print that hides where the pieces meet. Can you line drawers with parchment paper? You can, and it works best in kitchen drawers where crumbs collect. Parchment is silicone coated, so it is slick and easy to lift out and shake clean. That coating also means most tape will not grip the surface well, so cut each sheet to fit snugly and let it rest in place rather than trying to fix it down. Can you turn wrapping paper into contact paper? In principle, by backing it with a double-sided adhesive sheet, but you are rebuilding a product the hard way, and the result depends entirely on that adhesive. Thin wrapping paper also wrinkles easily once glue is involved. If you want the print to stick, starting with a peel and stick paper sheet is simpler and more predictable.

Shelf liner does not pull bugs into a kitchen on its own. Ants, roaches and pantry moths come for food, water and a dark place to hide, and a liner only matters when it supplies one of those three. So does shelf liner attract bugs? Not by itself, but a badly fitted one can feed and shelter the bugs that are already coming. The useful question is which version you have on your shelves right now. What brings bugs into a cabinet in the first place University extension services agree on the short list. Pantry insects arrive in food packages or fly in, then stay because they find crumbs, spilled flour, open bags of rice or a forgotten box of pet kibble. Cockroaches need water as much as food, which is why they gather near leaking pipes and under sinks. Nearly every household pest prefers somewhere dark, tight and undisturbed to rest during the day. Look at your own shelves against that list: Food. Crumbs, sticky rings from syrup bottles, the dusting of sugar around a canister, paper and thin plastic bags that insects can chew through. Water. A slow drip under the sink, condensation on a cabinet that backs onto a dishwasher, a damp dish rack stored on a shelf. Shelter. Clutter, stacked paper bags, gaps along the back of a shelf, and any pocket a small insect can crawl into. A shelf liner sits right in the middle of that picture. It is not food in the way flour is, it is not a water source, and on a flat shelf it is not a hiding spot. Whether it stays that way depends on how it was installed and what you put on top of it. Does shelf liner attract bugs? Only in these two ways The pocket underneath Loose-laid liner, or adhesive liner with lifted corners, creates a thin space between the paper and the shelf. Crumbs slide in through the gap and stay there, out of sight, where no sponge reaches them. Cockroaches spend their days in cracks and crevices, and a curling edge along the back of a pantry shelf is exactly that kind of crevice. The liner did not attract the roach. It gave one a room with a snack bar. The fix is fit, not a different material. A liner pressed flat to the shelf, trimmed to the edges and kept down at the corners leaves nothing to crawl under. Our guide on how to keep shelf liner in place covers the slipping and lifting problems that create those pockets. Paper, paste and the insects that eat them This part deserves a straight answer, because the search results tend to skip it. Two common household insects are documented paper and starch eaters. Silverfish scrape at starchy materials such as glue, paste and paper, and they thrive in humid rooms. Older entomology bulletins describe cockroaches feeding on wallpaper paste and on the glue in book bindings. Main Street's Classic Sheets are paper, listed on each product page as peel and stick paper wallpaper, and we do not publish a pest-resistance claim for them or for the adhesive on the back. Paper on a dry, clean shelf in a home without an infestation is simply not on the menu in any meaningful way. Paper in a damp cabinet in a home that already has silverfish is a different situation, and the answer is to fix the damp and the infestation, not to hunt for a different liner. Does contact paper attract roaches? Roaches go where the food and water are, and contact paper supplies neither unless it is trapping crumbs or holding moisture. The people who ask this question usually found roaches on or under a lined shelf and wondered whether the paper was the cause. In most cases the paper was simply where the evidence was visible. The roaches were already in the kitchen for the sink, the trash, the stove or the crumbs behind the toaster. That said, a few spots deserve extra caution with any self-adhesive paper: The cabinet under the sink. Skip it. Bare shelving there lets you spot a slow leak early, and Main Street lists areas exposed to moisture among the surfaces to avoid. Silverfish favor damp spaces, too. Shelves above a dishwasher or kettle station. Steam and condensation work their way under edges. Shelves where you already see droppings. Deal with the pests first. Lining over an active problem hides it. For everything else, a well-fitted liner on a dry shelf is neutral at worst. Our article on whether shelf liner protects cabinets explains the same line from the other direction: liners handle slow, dry wear, and they are the wrong tool for anything wet. Insect repellent shelf liner: a different product entirely Search for bug resistant shelf liner and you will find liners treated with an insecticide. These are pesticide products, not decorative paper, and they carry a pesticide label whose directions have to be followed. EPA-registered labels for treated shelf papers have included instructions not to place wrapped or unwrapped food or food utensils directly on the paper. Several university extension services also advise against using household pesticides in food storage areas at all, because of the risk of contaminating the food. If you have a real infestation, a pest professional or your local extension office is the right call. A liner of any kind, treated or not, is not a pest control plan. Main Street does not make treated liners. Our sheets are decorative paper, and we would rather tell you that plainly than let a product page imply something it cannot deliver. Line your shelves so pests have nowhere to hide Done well, lining a cupboard can make pest problems easier to catch. A clean, flat, light-colored surface shows you what a dark, worn shelf hides. Empty and vacuum first. Extension entomologists recommend vacuuming shelves and crevices rather than only wiping them, since a wet cloth can push crumbs deeper into cracks. Then follow Main Street's prep: a damp cloth, a solution of 30% isopropyl alcohol and 70% water, and a full dry. Check the surface. Main Street lists smooth tile, sealed wood and painted drywall as the best surfaces. If a shelf was recently painted, wait at least four weeks before applying, as the brand advises. Cut to the inside edges. Trim the sheet so it meets the back and sides of the shelf without curling up the wall. Our guide to lining kitchen shelves covers measuring a whole kitchen and the order to work in. Press every edge and seam. Use a smoothing tool along the perimeter. The edge is where crumbs get in. Pick a light ground. Crumbs, droppings and moth webbing stand out against a pale sheet. A dense dark pattern camouflages them. Decant dry goods. Extension services recommend glass, metal or rigid plastic containers with tight lids, since insects can chew through paper and thin plastic bags. Use older food first. On a light sheet, a monthly glance becomes a real inspection. Small dark specks that look like ground pepper, fine webbing in a corner, or a trail of ants along a seam are all easier to spot on a soft eucalyptus print than on bare, scuffed wood. Patterns that make crumbs easy to spot If inspection matters to you, choose for contrast. The hutch in the photo above uses All About Balance, a leafy print on a pale ground sold as 12 double panels, the equivalent of 24 sheets at 11 x 16 in, which is enough for a run of shelves. Eucalyptus is a soft watercolor of silver dollar leaves, gentle enough that anything sitting on it reads clearly. Carrara Marble gives a pantry a clean white look, and a stray grain of rice or a spill shows up against it quickly. Each 12-pack of Classic Sheets covers about 14.6 sq ft, at 1.22 sq ft per sheet. Check the product page for the pack you choose, since the larger packs list their own totals. For tips on the whole process, Main Street's how-to-use page lays out the steps and the surfaces to skip. Founder Jan McCallum trained as an oil painter, and the collections lean toward prints you would be happy to look at every time you open a cupboard. On a pantry shelf, that pleasure has a practical side. You notice a clean, pretty shelf, and you notice the moment it is not clean. Frequently asked questions Does shelf liner attract bugs? Not on its own. Bugs come for food, water and shelter, and a flat, well-fitted liner on a dry shelf supplies none of them. Problems start when edges lift and trap crumbs, or when paper sits in a damp cabinet. Fix the fit, keep the shelf dry, store food in sealed containers, and the liner stays neutral. Does contact paper attract roaches? Roaches follow food and water, and contact paper offers neither unless it is hiding crumbs or holding moisture. Lifted edges create the crevices roaches like to rest in, so keep every edge pressed down. If you find roaches on a lined shelf, treat the infestation first. The paper usually just made the evidence easier to see. Is there a shelf liner that repels bugs? Insecticide-treated shelf liners exist, but they are pesticide products with labels you must follow, and treated papers have typically carried warnings against placing food or utensils directly on them. Extension services generally discourage pesticides in food storage areas. Main Street's sheets are decorative paper with no pest-repelling claim. Do silverfish eat shelf paper? Silverfish feed on starchy materials such as paper, glue and paste, and they prefer humid spaces. Any paper liner could interest them in a damp cabinet with an existing infestation. The fix is lowering humidity and dealing with the insects. On a dry shelf in a home without silverfish, a paper liner is not a meaningful attraction. Should I line the cabinet under my sink? We would skip it. Bare shelving under a sink lets you catch a slow leak before it spreads, and damp conditions draw roaches and silverfish alike. Main Street also lists areas exposed to moisture among the surfaces to avoid for its sheets. Save the paper for dry shelves and drawers elsewhere in the kitchen.