Congratulations, if you read past the headline and are considering wallpaper in your home, the treatment will place you in a stylish coterie. Papered walls have glamorized rooms throughout history, shifting a functional room into a descriptive art piece. It’s not a simple addition, permanently sealing a print to your room’s wall is a decision as weighty as converting a shed or leaving the animal shelter with a new pet. While trends evolve, wallpaper styles adjust to the times but they will always add to a room’s gushing with love factor.
Fabric is used as wallpaper above the fireplace. The pattern, texture and color creates a layered contemporary classic at London’s Ham Yard Hotel. Copyright by Horst P. Horst / Vogue / OTTO / Conde Nast
In Christiane Lemieux’s latest design book, The Finer Things, she devotes a section to wallpaper. Lemieux is a proponent of quality and personalized style, dressing a room in a sophisticated look like a Parisian wearing a hat.
The Gottwald bathroom in Richmond, Virginia, is not your typical bathing experience. The addition of wallpaper with blended pieces amps the luxury factor, creating a design more expected in the lobby of a lux hotel. Courtesy of Bunny Williams.
Lemieux Guidelines: What You Need to Know About Wallpaper:
- History: Wallpaper descended from tapestries, which were used to warm up the interiors of those drafty old homes.
- Why It Stuck: A more decorative, affordable option than weighty works of art.
- Enduring Evolution: Still holds the same composite as papers dating back to the 17th century, just updated with the trends.
- Composition: When selecting papers, research on how it was made–hand painted, wood block, silkscreen techniques–or current developments like digital printing.
- Installation: Begin by priming the walls beforehand the way you would with paint, which allows the paper to adhere correctly. Though wallpapering a room is an intricate process that is more involved than coating a wall with paint, a project where considering an expert is a sensible expense.
- How Much Is Needed: While square footage in relation to the amount in a roll will make you dust off your math skills, err on over buying. Wallpaper will be cut and tossed due to the complexities of a room’s layout from the doors, windows etc.
The size and simple quality of this rouge grass cloth print by Phillip Jeffries is a simple installation that brings in a unique element to the room via the tactile feel and shade. Copyright by Benjamin Benschneider / OTTO
The Finer Things. Copyright © 2016 by Christiane Lemieux. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.
