We’ve gathered together our favourite pattern wallpaper ideas for your delectation. Will you choose a cheery floral wallpaper or modern graphic number, wallpaper that has been surface-printed, digitally printed or hand-painted? Will you paper one wall or all four? We prefer the latter – if you’re going to get wet, you might as well go swimming. Wallpaper sometimes gets rather bad press. People wrinkle their noses, mutter things like ‘grannyish’ and protectively clutch their tins of white paint. Although there is a time and place for pale minimalism (heck, we have an entire gallery dedicated to the subject), we think it’s time for wallpaper to have a comeback. Too often it is relegated to the downstairs loo. Why not use it to line your bedroom or living room? It has the power to make small spaces look cosy, not cramped, and larger rooms grand instead of stark.
MAY WE SUGGEST: 63 of the best wallpapers and Rita Konig’s advice on choosing them
Paul Massey
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Inspired by her upbringing on Long Island and her travels in Europe, American interior designer April Russell has decorated her London house with boldly patterned fabrics and wallpapers and a carefully curated mix of antique and contemporary furniture. A headboard by April, upholstered in a Tissus d’Hélène fabric, picks up on the pinks in Cole & Son’s ‘Hummingbirds’ wallpaper.
Dean Hearne
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A trip to India inspired Claire Worthington and Charlie Bigham to launch a successful food business and now a range of colourful wallpapers, which Claire designs at home in their Georgian rectory in Wiltshire. A spare bedroom is papered in one of her designs, ‘Parakeets in the Oak’.
Mel Yates
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The bedroom of this house designed by Max Rollitt relies on a colour scheme of contrasting colours and introduces an extra layer of cosiness via the textured picture frame and bedside chest of drawers. The antique quilt was matched to ‘Jasper Peony’ wallpaper, an Adam Calkin design from Lewis & Wood, while the lampshade is made from book paper and hand-painted by artist Madeleine Bradbury, whose designs are inspired by the Bloomsbury Artists. Find it for £98 at Bloomsbury Interiors.
WATCH
Interior designer Rita Konig on how to make a bed | House & Garden
Michael Sinclair
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An instinct for recognising talent paid off handsomely for the owners of this Victorian honuse in north Londo when they selected the decorator Rachel Chudley to shake up its interiors with her exuberant approach.
The sofa’s rich teal velvet upholstery, red hand-dyed velvet curtains, also by Lucy Bathurst, which hang from a bespoke copper rail, and a velvet ottoman pick up on the colours of the ‘Verdure’ wallpaper in tapestry green by Melissa White for Zoffany.
