What sort of finish is this?

[Alfie25]

My house (built late 1980’s) has this lovely swirly patterned wall finish throughout the hall, staircase and landing. But what is it exactly? I know it looks like artex but it’s not particularly brittle (although it may have several coats of paint over it). At the same time it’s not wallpaper as there's no uniformity to it, and you can tell by how it’s applied where it meets the ceiling and lightswitches. On one corner, a bit has been scraped off (see last picture) and it looks as if it could peel/scrape off?? Could it be lining paper on the walls which has then been artexed over?

Whatever it is, what would be the best way to go about replacing it? Ideally I want these walls plastered/skimmed, but would this existing covering (whatever it is) have to come off first?

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[ic1927]

That's artex for certain, if there's 'paper' like you say on the corners it's probably where they taped it prior to texturing. A plasterer would unibond and then skim over this surface quite easily.

 

[Alfie25]

Sorry what do you mean by taped it? They would just tape the corners not the rest of the walls?? Why would that be?

That corner piece in the photo is the only bit where the covering has come off, which was probably caused by someone catching it when walking past. It does look like you could get a scraper in there and scrape it off like wallpaper, but I've no idea how easily it would come off.

Likewise whilst a plasterer could skim over it, isn't there a good chance the artex could just lift off the walls? Its mostly quite a thin layer (apart from a few high spots) and only looks as thick as wallpaper. It's not like the usualy rock hard artex i've seen stippled onto ceilings.

 

[ic1927]

It's definitely artex. Tapes are used to hide cracks. If there was a crack on the external angle then a tape would be put on with thick caulking (thickly mixed artex) to cover the crack prior to texturing, most artexers back then used paper tapes as opposed to scrim cloths. If the artex is well stuck every where else, then plastering over it is no problem.