Tips for selecting wallpaper for your home

Wallpapers can instantly transform a room in your home, making it feel brighter, warmer, or cosier. But with a dizzying range of colours, styles, patterns and even textures of wallpapers to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when choosing wallpaper, so we’ve put together these style tips to make the decision making process less daunting.

1. Style

If you already have a design theme or style in a room, use that as your guide. By sticking to your existing theme when it comes to the wallpaper, the room design will flow naturally and cohesively.

Casual: If the room you’re decorating has fairly casual styling, the existing décor can really be enhanced with different wallpaper patterns and textures. For example, if your furniture is fairly plain, you can really stand to make a bolder choice for your wallpaper, such as floral, plants, and textured prints.

Formal: For a formal look, choose an elegant wallpaper design, such as a lacy damask design or hand-painted print. You could also go for large-scale patterns for a dramatic look.

Rustic: To add a warm, rustic feel to the room, select a textured wallpaper, a distressed timber effect, or brick-effect wallpaper.

Playful: This is great for a child’s room where you can add bright or themed wallpaper, such as a jungle, woodland, space or safari theme. Use your child’s interests as your guide! Alternatively, choose a wallpaper with small repeated motifs, such as polka dots.

2. Pattern and Texture

It’s important to be open-minded when choosing wallpaper. Don’t hesitate to get advice, as often that gorgeous print that you’re worried might be too bold, is often the very thing that will deliver the transformation you are looking for!

Size of the room: Just because you have a large room, it doesn’t mean that you need to have large scale patterns, or vice versa. Think of how dramatic a small bathroom will look with a large print of ‘delicious monster’ leaves.

If you have a room where the walls are ‘busy’ with windows or built-in furniture, a small-patterned wallpaper can look great, as it creates a really interesting visual, with hints of colours and patterns catching the eye. As a general rule, use large-scale patterns with bright colours if you want to make an emptier room look fuller.

Texture: Textured wallpaper will create design depth, drama, and a warming dimensional effect. Textured wallpaper can also hide or camouflage wall imperfections. Notably, different textures can be used to instead of colour if you already have a colourful statement piece in a room.

There are wallpaper options with tactile surfaces which include grass, string cloth, silk, foil and fabric. There are also non-tactile textured wallpapers, such as marble, wood, brick, leather and even animal skins. Metallic wallpapers are great for rooms with poor, natural light. The metallic shine can reflect light deeper into a room.

3. Colour

When selecting a colour for your wallpaper, you’ll need to start by considering the colour of your furniture and flooring. Remember that you want everything in the room to flow, and that colour can set the mood of a room. Have a look at how colour in your home can affect your moods.

If you choose a bold colour, then it’s a good idea to choose one that has a pattern on it which is lighter, which then ‘tones down’ the colour overall. Choose colours that you have already used in your décor.

As with choosing paint colours, consider the size of the room. If you have a smaller room, opt for lighter colours, as darker colours will make the room seem smaller. If redecorating a small area, then have a look at our tips for small spaces.

You can go bolder and brighter depending on the mood you want to create in a room. We suggest something tranquil for a bedroom or nursery, while you can choose something with more ‘personality’ for a lounge, bathroom or entertainment area.

There are so many fabulous wallpaper designs out there to choose from, and it should be a really fun experience as you play around with colours, patterns and textures. Don’t be discouraged to go beyond your comfort zone and try something new.