The most common mistake is to fall in love with a design and only then wonder where it might go. Turn that around. Before you look at a single pattern, look at the room. What is it for, and how does it make you want to feel?
A bedroom usually wants calm; a dining room can take drama; a hallway is the first thing anyone sees, so it sets the tone for the whole house. Notice the light, too, since a north-facing room and a sun-filled one will do very different things to the same colour. Once you know what the room needs, the overwhelming choice suddenly narrows to something manageable.
"Do not start by falling for a design. Start with the room, and let it brief you."
Start With the Room, Not the Roll
Four rooms, four different briefs. Woodland Weeds in Forest, from SS26 by William Morris at Home, is a soft green meadow behind a bed, which is calm doing its job. Moire Screen in Black, from Playful Layers by Tres Tintas, takes a dining room somewhere altogether darker, which is a room you sit in after dark and can afford to.
La Quintinie in Indigo, from Honfleur by Nina Campbell, does the hallway job, a drawn garden of pavilions and topiary setting a tone before anyone has taken their coat off. And Thistle Damask in Sage, from Eden II by Hoopla Walls, is what to reach for when a room has little light to spare and you want to keep every bit of it.
Woodland Weeds, Forest by William Morris at Home
Moire Screen, Black by Tres Tintas
La Quintinie, Indigo by Nina Campbell
Thistle Damask, Sage by Hoopla Walls
"Deep colours make a room feel cosy and enveloping; pale ones open it up to the light."
Choosing Pattern and Colour
With the room in mind, pattern and colour become far easier. As a rule, a busy, high-energy design suits a space you pass through or use briefly, a cloakroom or a hall, while a calmer pattern rewards a room you linger in. Do not be ruled by the old myth that small rooms need small patterns: a bold design can be glorious in a little room, wrapping it up rather than exposing it. There is more on pattern and scale here, and on choosing a colour here.
Colour is where the mood really lives. Espiguilla in Brown 3, from Raffias Eco by Coordonné, is the deep, saturated end of it, a warm woven brown you are wrapped inside rather than looking at. Vallmo Grand in Pink and Beige, from Vallmo by Boråstapeter, is the other kind of confidence: an enormous poppy on one wall of an otherwise quiet room.
Take your lead from whatever is staying in the room, the sofa, the floor, the view through the door, so the new paper joins a conversation already underway. And above all, order samples, tape them up large, and look at them by day and by lamplight before you commit. It is the single best habit in decorating.
Espiguilla, Brown 3 by Coordonné
Vallmo Grand, Pink & Beige by Boråstapeter
You Do Not Have to Paper Everything
Here is the most freeing thing to know: wallpaper is not all or nothing. You need not paper every wall, or every room. A single papered wall behind a bed or a sofa transforms a space for the cost of a roll or two, and Carvato in Midnight, from Terra by Arte, shows exactly that: one deep embossed wall meeting a bare plaster one, and neither the worse for it. Papering all four walls of one room and leaving the next quieter gives you drama where you want it and calm where you need it, and something soft like Rosetta in Birch, from Boho by Lewis & Wood, is what that rest can look like. It need not be a plain.
You can even paper only the ceiling, the so-called fifth wall, for an unexpected and rather magical effect. There is a whole post on that here, and more ideas like it here. The most sophisticated homes are almost never papered end to end; they are paced, with moments of pattern and moments of rest.
Carvato, Midnight by Arte
Rosetta, Birch by Lewis & Wood
"Think of a house like a piece of music. The quiet passages are what make the loud ones sing."
The truth is that there is no single right way to begin, only the way that suits your room and your nerve. Start with one wall you walk past every day, choose something that makes you happy to see it, and the rest tends to follow more easily than you would think.
Where to Go Next
Read on for how to choose a colour, how to choose pattern and scale, what to do on a budget, the unexpected places to use it and how to decorate the rest of the room around it. Or start browsing in Feature Wall Ideas, Floral, Geometric and Under £35.
One last picture to hold on to. Poppy in Blue, from Victorian by Coordonné: a small print, a sunlit room, and nothing else in it trying very hard.
Poppy, Blue by Coordonné
