Paperhangers
Cover interior walls or ceilings of rooms with decorative wallpaper or fabric, or attach advertising posters on surfaces such as walls and billboards. May remove old materials or prepare surfaces to be papered.
- Median pay
- $52,140
- Doing it now
- 2,300
- By 2035
- Up 4.3%
- Usually needs
- No formal educational credential
a year
across the country
200 openings a year
to get in
What the work involves
- Smooth strips or sections of paper with brushes or rollers to remove wrinkles and bubbles and to smooth joints.
- Trim rough edges from strips, using straightedges and trimming knives.
- Trim excess material at ceilings or baseboards, using knives.
- Check finished wallcoverings for proper alignment, pattern matching, and neatness of seams.
- Mark vertical guidelines on walls to align strips, using plumb bobs and chalk lines.
- Cover interior walls and ceilings of rooms with decorative wallpaper or fabric, using hand tools.
- Apply adhesives to the backs of paper strips, using brushes, or dunk strips of prepasted wallcovering in water, wiping off any excess adhesive.
What to study
The fields of study the Department of Education links to this occupation, most widely taught first.
- Building/Construction Finishing, Management, and InspectionSee 14 colleges that teach it
Who it suits
O*NET scores every occupation on six interest dimensions. This one leans hardest on these three.
Hands-on and practical
Organised and precise
Creative and expressive
Careers like this one
Where this comes from: the description and the task list are O*NET, which the Department of Labor maintains. Pay, workforce size, outlook and the education normally needed are the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections programme, 2025 wages and 2025 to 2035 projections. Half of them earn more than $52,140 a year, which means half earn less, and what you would earn depends on where you work and how long you have been doing it. The fields of study come from the National Center for Education Statistics crosswalk.