Lotus Aloe from Random Chinoiseries by Coordonne, a painted pond of lotus, willow and birds wrapping a dining room with a long wooden table and woven pendant lights
Decorating Notes

The Nature Cure: The Case for Biophilic Wallpaper

By Wallpaper Sales

In 1984 a biologist gave a name to something we have always felt. Biophilic design is the considered response: deliberately bringing the natural world back inside, so our homes can do for us what a walk in the woods once did.

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In 1984 the biologist E.O. Wilson gave a name to something humans have always felt: biophilia, our innate affection for the natural world and every living thing in it. It is not sentimentality but biology.

We evolved among leaves and water and open horizons, and some deep part of us still expects to find them. The evidence is striking: in one famous study, hospital patients with a view of trees recovered faster and needed less pain relief than those facing a brick wall. The trouble is that we now spend almost all our lives indoors, and much of it looking at screens. Biophilic design is the considered response.

"Our love of nature is not sentimentality but biology, and some deep part of us still expects to find it."

Nature, Brought Indoors

Wallpaper is one of the most effective tools biophilic design has, because it can surround you with nature on a scale no houseplant can match. Spring Festival in Gold, from Coordonné's Random Metallics II, gilds a whole garden across a wall, and Alnarp, from Boråstapeter's Herrgård, does the same thing in soft green with a landscape you could walk into.

Depth matters as much as subject. Reverie in Navy and Bodnant Garden, both from Solstice by Graham & Brown, are a thicket and a garden respectively, one dark enough to disappear into and one drawn as though sketched on the spot.

Spring Festival in Gold from Random Metallics II by Coordonne, a gilded painted garden of peonies and birds behind a long low sofa

Spring Festival, Gold by Coordonné

Alnarp in Green from Herrgard by Borastapeter, a soft green landscape toile seen through a doorway into a pale sitting room

Alnarp, Green by Boråstapeter

Reverie in Navy from Solstice by Graham and Brown, dense dark foliage above deep green panelling with an open door

Reverie, Navy by Graham & Brown

Bodnant Garden in Creme Brulee from Solstice by Graham and Brown, a drawn garden of flowers and butterflies in a room with a fireplace and a pale armchair

Bodnant Garden by Graham & Brown

"Wallpaper can surround you with nature on a scale no houseplant could ever manage."

Not all of it needs to be immersive. This is also the world of trailing foliage and quiet botanicals, of the restful greens and earthy tones drawn straight from the countryside. Rowen Botanical, from York's Jardin, and Ikat Flower Trail are leaf trails at a domestic scale, and Flores, from Harlequin's Signature collection, blurs its blooms until they read almost as weather.

Rowen Botanical in Honey from Jardin by York Wallcoverings, a soft yellow green leaf trail in a bright room with a striped chair and a floor lamp

Rowen Botanical, Honey by York Wallcoverings

Ikat Flower Trail in Jade and Amber by Eijffinger, a jade and gold leaf trail above a wooden bench and a metal chair

Ikat Flower Trail, Jade by Eijffinger

Flores in Powder, Sky and Parchment from Signature by Harlequin, oversized blurred blooms behind a blue upholstered bed

Flores, Powder / Sky by Harlequin

How and Where to Use It

Biophilic wallpaper flatters almost any room, but it does its best work where you most need restoring. A leafy design brings a garden-like serenity to a bedroom or a bathroom; a sweeping mural turns a living room or a hallway into a window onto somewhere green; a soft, nature-drawn texture warms a study or a snug. It is especially powerful in the rooms with least natural light or no view to speak of, where it can conjure the nature the window cannot provide.

Cynara, from Ananda by Osborne & Little, is the brightest way to do it, and Charmille in Marmalade, from Arte's Ombre, the subtlest: no motif at all, just a surface that behaves like weathered stone.

Cynara in Raspberry and Cobalt from Ananda by Osborne and Little, exotic flowers in raspberry and cobalt beside a boucle chair and a window

Cynara, Raspberry / Cobalt by Osborne & Little

Charmille in Marmalade from Ombre by Arte, a soft mottled ombre wall in an open room beside a kitchen

Charmille, Marmalade by Arte

Lean into greens and earthy tones, pair the paper with natural materials and a few real plants, and let the outdoors set the mood. Order a sample first to judge those greens truly in your own light. We cannot all live beside a wood or a water meadow. Biophilic wallpaper is the next best thing: a daily dose of the nature we are, it turns out, quietly built to need.

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