Walls in Farmagudi are dry for most of the year and then tested hard: the monsoon drives rain straight at whichever side of a building faces the weather on this open plateau. That makes the choice of wall more important than the choice of paper. A partition between two rooms, the sort a bed or sofa usually stands against, is where vinyl wallpaper is safest. If an outside wall has come up in patches after any past monsoon, leave it bare until the leak is traced and cured, or face it with PVC panels instead. In older quarters, flaking paint has to come off and the wall be primed before any roll goes up.
- Flats near the campuses: a single feature wall in vinyl, picked from the partitions that rain cannot reach from outside.
- Study rooms and home offices: a plain textured vinyl that hides scuffs from chair backs and wipes clean of fingermarks.
- Walls on the weather side of the plateau: left unpapered unless they come through a whole monsoon dry; PVC panels carry less risk there.
Farmagudi is the plateau just outside Ponda on the Panjim road. It is an education centre, home to the Goa College of Engineering and other institutes, with a hilltop park, a temple and a small fort memorial, and housing for staff and families around the campuses.
Housing is a mix of institutional quarters, hostels, flats and independent houses. Staff quarters and hostels need plain, durable window coverings in numbers; private houses are furnished like any family home.
The plateau is open and breezy, hot in summer and exposed to driving rain in the monsoon. There is no salt.
Hilltop and plateau homes
Exposed walls on high ground are driven with rain in the monsoon. Paper the sheltered inner walls, and treat any wall that has shown damp patches before covering it. Vinyl wallpaper is the safe choice.
Inland homes
Dry inland walls are the kindest to wallpaper. Almost any type can be used, including textured and fabric-backed papers. The risk here is a wall that takes the full monsoon rain from outside, which should be checked for seepage before papering.
