Some brands inherit a look. The Bermejo brothers inherited a printworks. Their father, Jaime Bermejo Sr., had spent decades running Papeles Pintados Aribau, a Barcelona wallpaper manufacturer with printing in its bones, and when his three sons, Jaime, Mitos and Daniel, founded Tres Tintas in 2004, they did so with all that craft behind them and a rather different idea in front of them. The name puts it neatly: tres tintas, three inks, for three brothers with colour in the blood.
Where the family firm had printed other people's designs beautifully, the sons wanted to make something of their own, and to make it, unusually for a wallpaper company, genuinely creative rather than merely decorative. What they built was less a catalogue than a creative project, and it has been unsettling the polite world of wallcoverings ever since.
Pipelines, Concrete, Urban Tribe by Tres Tintas
The wall, handed to the artists
The idea that sets Tres Tintas apart is disarmingly simple: rather than design everything in-house, hand the wall to an artist. Over the years the brothers have collaborated with well over two dozen painters, illustrators and fashion designers, turning each collection into a small gallery of contemporary work. The roll call is genuinely starry, chief among them Javier Mariscal, the artist who gave the world Cobi, the cheerfully wonky mascot of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, alongside the great designer Patricia Urquiola and a rotating cast of younger names the brothers take evident pleasure in discovering.
Centrepiece Composition, Red, New Primitivism by Tres Tintas
Linear Footprints, Red, New Primitivism by Tres Tintas
Pacific Blooming, Red, New Primitivism by Tres Tintas
"Rather than design everything in-house, Tres Tintas hands the wall to a living artist. Each collection is a small gallery."
None of this is novelty for its own sake. It rests on a conviction, quite openly held, that a wall can carry art and culture as readily as a canvas can, and that wallpaper need not be the polite backdrop to a room but can be the most alive thing in it. It is a refreshing thought in an industry that too often mistakes good taste for timidity.
A little Barcelona nerve
There is a reason this particular spirit comes from this particular city. Barcelona has never done timid. It is the city of Gaudí's molten cathedrals and Miró's primary colours, of broken-tile mosaic and modernista swagger, a place where boldness is simply the local dialect. Tres Tintas is that sensibility rolled up and boxed: provocative, urban, sunlit and entirely unafraid. One collection, fittingly, is named Barcino, the old Roman name for the city, and draws directly on the curves and colour of Catalan modernism.
"Barcelona has never done timid, and Tres Tintas is that spirit boxed up and sent to your door."
For a British room, a little of that nerve can be transformative. We are, as a nation, only lately emerging from a long spell of tasteful neutrals, and the appetite now is unmistakably for colour, character and a bit of joy, which happens to be precisely what this house deals in.
Clavelitos, Neutral, Solera by Tres Tintas
Clavelitos, White, Solera by Tres Tintas
The way to use it is to treat it as you would a painting. A Tres Tintas mural, made up to your own measurements, can be the single gesture that wakes a dull room, the thing everyone looks at and asks about; a bolder illustrative or geometric design brings wit to a hallway, a study or a child's room, and a downstairs cloakroom is the perfect place to let something truly exuberant off the leash. Wherever it goes, the trick is restraint everywhere else. Give the design the floor, keep the furnishings simple, and let the wall do the talking.
Executives Park, Urban Tribe by Tres Tintas
Guanabana, Arena, Bossa Nova by Tres Tintas
A practical word to finish. The papers are printed with water-based inks on a non-woven backing, so you paste the wall rather than the paper and they hang more easily than their drama might suggest, and the murals can be tailored to a specific wall. As ever with colour this confident, order a sample and see it in your own light first, since a screen tends to tame the very qualities that make these designs sing.
In a world of safe, grown-up good taste, Tres Tintas is a standing invitation to be braver: to hang something with an artist's name and a city's swagger behind it. Not every wall needs to whisper. Sometimes, as Barcelona has always known, the boldest choice is simply the happiest one.
