If you’re wanting to add a little pattern to your home to refresh your space, wallpaper is one way to step outside your comfort zone and make a statement in any room. This versatile design trend has returned full force and with more patterns than ever before. Still hesitant? We’ve asked experts, from Atlanta to Sacramento, to share their best tips on how to enhance any room with wallpaper.
Start with a small space
You don’t need to wallpaper an entire room to add some interest. A small wall, entryway, or even closet will allow you to become more familiar with how to wallpaper and is a very satisfying project you can complete in a day. – One Delightful Home
Consider printing photos of your room to help visualize and choose
As a very dominant feature for a room, choosing wallpaper can feel scary. If you don’t have design software, make visualizing the space easier by printing images of your furniture or room, cutting them out, and placing them on your chosen wallpaper pattern. – Sian Zeng
Consider using wall stencils
Wall stencils are a budget-friendly way for creative people to decorate the interior of their homes. Reusable wall stencils are praised by the DIY community because they allow anyone to easily get the look of designer wallpaper with all the excitement of customizing colors and size to create a unique, conversational accent wall. –Cutting Edge Stencils
Try a room that isn’t frequently visited first
Wallpaper is such a great way to add personality, depth, and texture to rooms. If you’re worried about starting out, start with a room people won’t visit often like a laundry room or inside a hall closet for a fun surprise. There are so many versions of wallpaper to choose from. Grasscloth adds a subtle texture and sometimes color that blends in nicely, all the way up to bold attention-grabbing patterns. Find your happy place. – Hey Jen Interiors
Add warmth and texture with a subtle pattern
If you are looking to spruce up your walls with some cool wallpaper but are a bit afraid of the commitment of a bold print, try a more subtle or small-scale pattern to add warmth and texture. One of my favorite patterns (that is also in my home’s entryway) is one that is soft and breezy and gently welcomes you into the house without taking the spotlight or being too in your face. –Sunny Circle Studio
Use unexpected patterns
Your walls can go beyond the expected pattern with custom creations like an antique chart on the ceiling, reproduction of fine art from the MFA, extending the bricks in your wine cellar (on paper), or reproducing an “out of print” wallpaper from grandma’s house. You can have a Chinoiserie, botanical, scenic mural based from any historic period in art or a photographic scene to extend your apparent space far beyond the walls. – Zoë Design
Apply wallpaper to your ceiling or furniture
My go-to when thinking about using wallpaper to enhance a space is to consider the alternative ways that it can be applied. Our natural instincts sometimes tell us that wallpaper can only be applied to specific areas or in traditional ways, such as a feature wall. But I like to encourage people to think about extending this to ceilings and even furniture. A great example would be moving from lining our storage units with wallpaper to using them on drawer fronts. There are many ways to be creative with wallpaper, we just need to be daring enough to try. – Saphron London
Often overlooked and underutilized, your home’s 5th wall or ceiling provides the perfect canvas when creating a unique and visually captivating feature in your home. Instead of stark white ceilings, introduce some bold patterns or rich textures to manipulate the scale and natural light within your space. Depending on the room, installing fine art prints or organic forms overhead will bring existing decor and light fixtures to life without being too overbearing or making the area feel cluttered. –Robin Sprong Wallpapers
Bring the outside in
Families are craving natural, peaceful homes to work and home-school children in right now because of COVID-19. Floral, tropical, and forest wallpaper is an easy way to do this. But when bringing the outdoors inside, remember to choose an eco-friendly paper that won’t harm your family’s air quality or mother earth. Sustainability and non-toxic products are always on-trend. – About Murals
Wallpaper can be temporary
My best advice for any homeowner thinking about adding wallpaper to their home is to not think of it as a forever thing. Removing wallpaper, even traditional pasted wallpaper, comes down with little damage to the walls if installed properly. This can make the decision to add wallpaper a lot less stressful. – Collected Eclectic
Always measure twice
Wallpaper can turn up the fun in any room with bold patterns and hyped up color. First, pick a pattern that sings to your heart, then check your measurements once, and then again. Next, go for a great peel and stick option. It’s super forgiving and even great for first-timers. You’ve got quick style loaded with fun. – Rave Interior Design
Don’t forget about the ceiling
The “accent wall” can be really effective, but just as often can look like you ran out of wallpaper, or money, or both. For maximum impact in this one-wall scenario (that truly nearly never fails), consider placing it on the ceiling. You can also embrace your dining room and powder room as the “ID” of your home. This is not the place to play it safe. Have fun with color, texture (yes, even grasscloth), and lighting. – Imagine Studios Inc.
Take advantage of stripes
Do you have a room that is not the ideal size? Are you not happy about the low ceiling or wish it was not so narrow? You can use striped wallpaper to change the optical size of a specific space. Using wallpaper with vertical stripes will make a room feel higher, while horizontal stripes will make the room look wider. You can, of course, do the opposite if your ceilings are for example too high. – Wallpaper from the 70s
Create harmony between your furnishings and wallpaper
Worried about growing “tired” of a large scale wallpaper? If you chose one in the palette of nature it’s always going to be easy to live with. Soft blues, greens, tans, and browns and always peaceful. Not everything in a space can be the rockstar. If you choose a stunning wallpaper, let the fabrics and furnishings harmonize with it – Susan Harter Muralpapers
Get creative with whiteboard wallpaper
What if your wall could be more than just a color or design? Whiteboard wallpaper is an easy to use, eco-friendly solution for modernizing your home and adding function to your wall. Create a shopping list, write a reminder, or just allow the kids to have fun drawing over innovative whiteboard wallpaper. – Smarter Surfaces
Try covering wood or styrofoam panels
One of my favorite ways to add wallpaper is to cover wood or styrofoam panels and then hang them in a series along a main wall. It’s a low commitment, high impact way to add a splash of color or a gorgeous pattern to any room. – The Graceful Goose
Choose wallpaper like you would an art piece
Wallpaper is meant to add some happiness to your home. Think of it as artwork when you’re considering which paper to purchase. Does it make you happy? Does it reflect your lifestyle? Does it transition well with the rest of your home? When you answer yes to these questions, you’ve found your perfect wallpaper. – Kerri Rosenthal
Use wallpaper to create a wow factor
Pick a pattern you love, not just because it’s on trend. Find something that adds a wow factor but doesn’t overwhelm the rest of your interior. If you have really fallen hard for a bold pattern but aren’t sure how it’s going to look on your walls, frame a piece and turn it into feature artwork instead. Have some fun in the bedroom and add wallpaper to panelled wardrobe doors! If you want to really go wild with your paper, use it all over in a small room like your cloakrooms and wow your guests. – Muchmore Design
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