With all the planning I've been doing recently regarding the interior design of the new house, I'm thinking a lot about wallpaper. Now we're not quite at the wallpapering stage yet, but I don't make decisions quickly. I like to mull them over for a while and consider all alternative options before choosing something. Especially something like wallpaper. Which I know isn't necessarily a permanent thing, but I am not a transient decorator. I tend to pick things for my home that I really truly love, and then live with them for a long time (and probably forever in the case of some of my furniture). So, over the past few months, as well as thinking about floor tiles, and baths and (less excitingly) radiator valves and bath wastes, I am also thinking about wallpaper.
I love wallpaper. Like, really, really love it. It adds something to a room which even the boldest of paint colours just can't do. It's almost like having a huge piece of art in the room. It can bring in accent colours beautifully, and can also be used very cleverly in small volumes, such as behind shelves, or on furniture.
Despite my massive indecisiveness, I have, bizarrely, already chosen the wallpaper for one of the rooms. Decided on it almost immediately in fact. I want a kind of kitsch, 70s, cocktail bar vibe in that room. I'm not entirely sure why, maybe it's a nod to the 70s wooden fireplace we had in the room next door (which I may well have kept had it been in this room). Maybe I've been inspired the Near & Far bar in Peckham Levels, that I walk past most days. Whatever it was, the Babylon wallpaper in Pink/Willow by House of Hackney is going to be perfect for this. I will pair it with black woodwork, pink walls, and some mid-century and wicker furniture. It's going to look amazing!
Now you may have spotted a theme with all these lovely prints. No, not that they all look GREAT paired with black woodwork (although they do). No, they're all botanical or leaf designs. Not something I've done subconsciously, but a look I think will be quite cohesive. I'm not normally one to follow a trend, but there are so many botanical and leaf print wallpapers around at the moment, it seems I may have inadvertently done just done that. So just in case you were wanting to also jump on this particular bandwagon, I've picked out a few more of my favourite botanical prints.
First up is a wallpaper I actually have, in our holiday let, One Mill House. It's called Cowparsley, by Cole & Son and I just love it. It's very calming and perfect for a bedroom. It comes in loads of colourways but we have the charcoal version.
Next up is another print by Charlotte Jade, Paradise. This is actually a bit of a mash up of the Balearic Palm style leaves above, and another of her designs, and I think it works really, really well. Mind The Gap are a fairly new company with some really great print designs they put onto wallpaper as well as other homeware items. My favourite pattern of this is Aquafleur, a very pretty, almost vintage floral design given a really bold modern look against the black backdrop.
Following these is something a bit less colourful, the gorgeous Bamboo by Farrow & Ball. The monochrome colourway makes this wallpaper feel quite sophisticated, and I think it would look perfect in a dining room (oh and look, more dark woodwork). Farrow & Ball actually have several floral and leaf print designs, and one of my favourites (and one I've come close to using several times) is Feather Grass. It's a much more simple and subtle pattern than most other florals, with the grass repeat design covering only the bottom half of the wall.
Another company with large range of botanical design wallpapers is Graham & Brown. From their range I really love the drama of the blue and green colourway in the Eden design. Their Jungle print also comes in a rather dramatic black and green version, but it's the blue and white one I like here which feels very fresh and a bit different to a lot of the darker palm prints around at the moment.
There are just so many great botanical and leaf print papers around at the moment, with more being added, it seems, almost daily. Divine Savages recently announced they would be launching a collection of nature inspired prints in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, which I'm sure will be stunning. I really need to stop looking at wallpaper though, before I change my mind about what I want in the house, and my decision becomes even more difficult! You can see more wallpapers I really love over on our Wallpaper Rocks board on Pinterest.