Captain Wallpaper Inc. is a family business founded by Oleksandr and Mariia, a husband-and-wife team raising three wonderful daughters. We built our company on a clear philosophy: trust, quality, and attention to every detail. Oleksandr is a licensed craftsman with extensive experience in the premium wallpaper segment, personally executing each installation. His expertise spans rare and challenging materials such as silk, grasscloth, leather, hand-painted wallcoverings, and historic restorations. Mariia is the co-founder and driving inspiration, overseeing project organization, client support, and creating a warm, welcoming atmosphere.
Our work is not just wallpaper installation — it is the art of turning walls into stories. We specialize in projects where heritage must be preserved and character expressed: designer interiors, boutiques, hotels, and historic homes. Each project for us is a dialogue not only with the space and materials but also with people — designers, architects, and clients — their vision, concepts, and ideas. Oleksandr brings precision and craftsmanship to every seam, while Mariia adds care and soul, shaping the unique family signature of Captain Wallpaper.
Wallpaper installer Oleksandr Bezhenar brings a high-end craft learned in his native Ukraine to the North Bay, where he has applied wallcoverings to everything from historic buildings to restaurants and private homes.
He likens his skill with a trimming knife to a surgeon with a scalpel. When cutting luxury wallpaper like English hand-painted de Gournay befitting a French château, there is no acceptable margin of error, particularly for the exacting Oleksandr Bezhenar.
While a mistake may not mean death, it could mean disaster for a project where the paper is, as one online observer put it, “gaspingly expensive.”
Bezhenar is one of a rarefied circle of wallpaper installers skilled and steady enough to handle the most delicate and expensive of wallcoverings in a vast array of materials from leather to Lincrusta, a paper with a textured relief that replaced fancy plasterwork in Victorian times and is still used in historic renovations. Each material demands highly specific tools and techniques.
Since arriving in Cloverdale three years ago after fleeing war in his native Ukraine with his wife Mariia and their three young daughters, Bezhenar has been establishing himself as a master of his craft, one of only a few in the North Bay equipped for any wallpapering challenge.
He recalls one client — a surgeon — in his hometown Odesa, who remarked how Bezhenar’s agility with his prized Japanese paper-cutting knife was similar to the precise hand-eye coordination required of a physician. “You can have medical education. You can have knowledge,” the physician said, “but if you cannot use your hand in the proper way, it will not be successful.”
With clients who sometimes invest thousands of dollars in a wallcovering, Bezhenar meticulously plans each installation before a single cut is made to ensure perfection.
Julie Biagini of Sonoma fell in love with a whimsical forest-themed mural paper she spotted while visiting a restaurant in the southwest region of England known as the Cotswolds and thought it would be perfect for a reading nook she was creating in her home.
Through Google she tracked down the maker — the venerable Cole and Son of England, renowned for its historic designs seen even in Buckingham Palace — but finding someone capable of handling the precious paper was another matter.
Biagini, who describes the whimsical botanical print as “a piece of art,” went to two designers to see if they knew of an expert wallpaper installer. Neither knew anyone. Ultimately, she found Bezhenar.
“The paper is very intricate. On the wall it looks like a mural. He did an amazing job. I can totally she how he’s an artist. It’s cool to have that kind of expertise in our local area,“ said Biagini’s husband Komas, who marvels at how Bezhenar precisely cut the historical paper around two sconces and made the electrical outlet look like it was part of the mural.
Wallcoverings can come in different sizes and different repeat options and few people know how to correctly calculate the amount of wallpaper needed for a space, said Mariia Bezhenar, who handles the business side of the work for her husband.
Besides the sometimes crushing price of the paper, if you miscalculate and wind up short, it could take up to 18 weeks to special order more and each run can come out slightly different in shade.
“The name of the color will be the same. The shape can be called the same,” she said. “But when you put them together, you can see the difference.”
Bezhenar calls himself “Captain Wallpaper,” a name that conveys his cool confidence and mastery of a skill he proudly elevates to an art —the more complex the project, the more exhilarated he feels.
“He says he’s not nervous. He is more excited. He likes those projects that are very challenging and difficult,” Mariia said, interpreting for her husband. “He feels more energy and he’s very happy people trust him with those projects.”
Wallpaper is once again having its moment in high design, embraced as a way to add texture and character to a room. The options are broad, from natural materials like grasscloth, woven rattans and rich silk, to applied murals to patterns both tiny and bold.
The Maximalist movement has revived interest in abstract shapes, big florals and animal prints.
Bezhenar keeps a collection of swatches from his favorite projects and flips through them admiringly, from a wood veneer with a soft sheen to earth-friendly materials like banana fiber, which he installed at an East Bay.
Each demands a different approach.
Whether it was applying 3D Velvet wallpaper in the tasting room of Domaine Carneros or a handmade paper of maranta grass he hung in a home in St. Helena, using a special leafing technique, Bezhenar relishes big challenges.
Pointing to a beaded paper he explained, through Mariia, who taught English in Ukraine, that if you position the knife wrong, the beads will fall off.
With a master’s degree in construction engineering from a Ukrainian university, he brings to the process a professional’s precision for angles, alignments and complex surfaces.
Before each project, he reviews reams of manufacturer instructions and creates detailed digital blueprints, noting fixtures and other features, to ensure against mistakes and so that every application appears seamless. Laser levels enable him to achieve exact vertical alignments.
He loves the results of each job, he said, and approaches a bare wall as something “naked” he wants to “make beautiful.”
“When he dresses up the walls and the clients come and the designer comes and sees his ideas come into appearance, and that Oleksandr just fulfilled their ideas, it’s a celebration,” Mariia said. “He’s happy when the client is happy and everything looks perfect.”
While building his own bonded business Bezhenar also works with Troy Maher, one of the only other wallpaper hangers in this region who is able to do high-end jobs, such as a 22,000-square-foot home in Tiburon that they recently sheathed in gorgeous wallcoverings.
Maher, who has chronic pain from a prosthetic shoulder, recalls how Bezhenar observed his anguish as he applied wallpaper to a huge ceiling. Bezhenar arrived for work the next day insisting on taking over.
“He did a magnificent job. It touched my heart and he did it with complete understanding, with my interests at heart,” Maher said.
He praised Bezhenar’s ability to “administer perfection, given all types of situations … with complete confidence.”
“I’ve seen it eat up lesser people,” he said.
For aluxury townhouse in Healdsburg, Bezhenar was entrusted with installing some of the most expensive paper on the market —Fromental — to a powder room and an office, one with hand-embossed gold flecks and that would be ruined if it came in contact with water or the imprint of a hand.
For his part, Bezhenar wants to keep the art alive and is trying to learn everything he can from older artisans, such as Maher.
Bezhenar’s journey from engineering to wallpaper, and from Ukraine to Cloverdale, is one of calculation, determination and the kindness of strangers.
As a young man finishing university in the seaport city of Odesa, he realized that he had too much energy to sit in front of a computer and switched to real estate.
The world financial collapse in 2008 forced him to shift gears again and find a practical career working with his hands.
When a friend recruited him to help with her wallpaper business, he was on his way, soaking up every technique he could in his quest to become a master of the craft. His clients would eventually include the top designers and studios, Mariia said.
And then Russia attacked Ukraine.
With the first explosions, the Bezhenars were desperate to get their daughters Eleanora, Anqelina and Agnessa, to safety.
They made it across the border to Romania knowing no one, with no local currency and nowhere to stay. Appealing for help on social media, they heard from a Romanian man working in Ireland who offered his house.
Other Romanians warmly lent a hand. But with little demand for a wallpaper hanger in that country, Oleksandr posted on Instagram he was available for work in English-speaking countries.
The first bite came from San Francisco, which Oleksandr located on Instagram.
Following Highway 101 north, he pinpointed Cloverdale as a commutable home-base. The community has warmly embraced the family, with Geoff and Cecile Peters sponsoring them.
The grateful Bezhenars are determined to give back.
Oleksandr volunteered to wallpaper a children’s nursery exhibit in the 1860s Gould-Shaw House Museum, one of the few Gothic Revival cottages in Sonoma County and on The National Register of Historic Places. He selected a beige satin Victorian pattern with flowers and birds.
One of his first challenging projects, technically and artistically, was in Santa Rosa’s landmark Flamingo Hotel.
The dining room demanded “total focus” with three different surface coverings.
For the walls, he applied a tropical design, each bird, leaf and vine aligning perfectly; beneath the chair rail molding, he applied a natural cork with a difficult to cut crumbly texture; the ceiling was done in a dramatic chili-red sisal with finely woven fibers, easily torn. It took a razor sharp blade to cut.
Bezhenar hopes his craftsmanship will allow him to earn a visa during a fraught time for immigrants. He has managed to pass the difficult exam to earn his contractor’s license.
He tells a story about a young Jewish man who went to a rabbi, asking what he could do in his future. The rabbi told him, as a Jewish man, you may have “a piano,” a profession (like his engineering). But, the rabbi said, you must also have “a violin,” a skill you can carry with you should you have to flee. Wherever you land, even if you don’t know the language to practice your profession, “you can open up your case and play for money.”
Bezhenar doesn’t rule outgoing back to his “piano” someday but right now he is loving “the violin,” and like a Joshua Bell, he’s determined to be “the best of the best.”
“Historic homes aren’t just walls — they’re living architecture with memory. Every curve, every crack holds a story,” he said. “When I install wallpaper in these spaces, my goal is not just to hide, but to highlight. I’m not simply hanging paper — I’m continuing a conversation with the craftsmen who built that home a century ago.”
The American people welcomed my family during a time of war.
In a place that was once unfamiliar, we were met with compassion, support, and open hearts.
I haven’t forgotten that.
Today, through my work, I give back — with care, precision, and pride in what I do.
It’s my way of honoring the people who stood by us.
This is my way of saying thank you.
This is the story of my family — and of how strangers came together to help my daughter and her cat.
Thank you for watching.
I collaborate with interior professionals to bring bold ideas to life — one wall at a time.
Every testimonial reflects the trust and results we’ve built together.
We might be a good fit if…
You value silence and precision
You prefer one craftsman over five subcontractors
You appreciate natural materials — silk,
grasscloth, leather, wood veneer
You’ve said: “It has to be perfect — or not at all”
Wallpaper installation in San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and surrounding areas.
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