There is no brand more thoroughly, reassuringly English than Sanderson, which is exactly why its origins are such a lovely surprise. When Arthur Sanderson set up in business in London in 1860, he was not a designer at all but a stationer with an eye, and what he sold was French: grand, luxurious paper hangings imported from the great Parisian houses, Zuber and Paul Balin among them, for the walls of fashionable English homes. It was fully nineteen years before he began printing papers of his own, and the 1920s before the company made so much as a yard of fabric. The most English house of all started life as a curator of French beauty.
From that unlikely beginning grew an institution.
"The most English house of all began, of all things, by importing French wallpaper."
By Royal Appointment
What Sanderson became, over the following century, was nothing less than the look of England itself. Its hand-drawn botanicals and blowsy florals, its birds and trailing leaves, came to define a gentle, countryside-inflected Englishness that has never really gone out of style.
Woodland Chorus, Botanical and Multi (Arboretum)
Annandale, Dove / Taupe (Chiswick Grove)
The establishment agreed. In 1924 the firm received a Royal Warrant as purveyor of wallpapers and paints to King George V, said to be the first ever granted for such goods, and it has supplied the Royal Residences ever since, an unbroken century of royal appointment.
Highgrove Toile, Highgrove Oak
Salisbury Highgrove, Madder Rose
By 1940 it was confident enough to take the venerable Morris & Co under its wing, and today it stands as the founding brand of the Sanderson Design Group, guardian of an archive running to some seventy thousand designs and printing blocks. It is, near enough, the closest thing Britain has to a national housestyle, equally at home on the walls of a country cottage and a royal palace.
"It is as close as Britain has to a national housestyle, on the walls of cottages and palaces alike."
The Whole English Room
Because Sanderson makes both wallpaper and fabric, and paint besides, it offers something few houses can: the whole coordinated English room. This is the brand for the layered, lived-in country look, a botanical papered on the walls and echoed, exactly or in a quieter key, on the curtains, a headboard or a favourite armchair. Done with a light hand, it is the most comforting way to decorate there is.
Sessile Leaf, Forest Green (Pinetum Prints)
For all the heritage, the archive is very much alive. Sanderson recolours and rescales its historic patterns constantly, and its recent collaborations, with the National Trust and with Disney among others, keep the old designs turning up in cheerful new company.
Barneby Stripe, Berry / Leaf (Sanderson x National Trust)
Hundred Acre Wood (Disney Home)
The result is a range broad enough to suit almost any room and any mood. A soft botanical makes for a restful, enveloping bedroom; a livelier archive print brings a hallway or a stair to life; and in a living room, a single papered wall in a light-ground design, with calm around it, tends to strike the happiest balance.
Cantaloupe, English Grey (Caspian)
Pair a paper with its matching or tonal fabric and the room pulls itself together almost unaided. As ever, order a sample and see the colour in your own light before committing.
For a house that started out selling someone else's wallpaper, it has done rather well. More than a hundred and sixty years on, Sanderson is no longer merely English style. It is very nearly the definition of it.
Ready to Bring the Whole English Room Home?
Browse the full Sanderson collection at Wallpaper Sales, wallpaper, fabric and paint together, from hand-drawn archive florals to the Highgrove and National Trust collaborations. Not sure which design and colourway will suit your room? Order a swatch first through our Sample Service before committing.
