How to choose wallpaper

Wall surfaces occupy the largest area in the room and immediately grab the eye. Therefore, their finishing plays a decisive role in creating an interior. Modern wallpaper collections cover all styles and offer an almost limitless range of decors, textures, textures and color combinations.

Finding your way in this endless ocean is not at all easy, but getting lost is very easy, so experts do not recommend going to stores at random – in the hope of a chance meeting with the “wallpaper of your dreams”. The fleeting charm of a seemingly vending sample can quickly dissipate, and the purchase will be unsuccessful. Even before going to shops, you should think over the future interior and get a fairly clear idea of ​​what kind of wallpaper you need and what tasks they will solve.

Three aspects can be distinguished in wallpaper decor: texture, color and pattern..

Designers reduce the endless variants of patterns to five main groups: these are “flowers”, stripes, large spots, spotted backgrounds and, finally, smooth backgrounds or wallpapers without a pattern..

“Flowers”

Professionals call “flowers” any recognizable figures and objects. For the general architectural perception, it does not matter what exactly is depicted on the wallpaper – the flowers themselves, the Eiffel towers, the gallant shepherdesses or the Egyptian pyramids. It is important that these “flowers” can be large or small, frequent or rare, as well as contrasting or vague.

Rule one:
Frequent and large “flowers” visually reduce the space, thicken it, while rare and small – they discharge and expand.

In addition, a small “floral” pattern can act as an unobtrusive, neutral background and can be successfully used within the framework of various styles, while large forms immediately set accents and become a dominant style, playing the role of a tuning fork in the overall design solution.

Approximately the same can be said about the degree of contrast of the picture. The more clearly, weighty, visibly the “flowers” are spelled out, the more noticeable is their participation in the overall style of the interior – such a drawing will immediately attract attention. Conversely, low-key, blurry images will look much more neutral..

Stripes

In addition to “colorful” wallpapers, striped wallpapers have become widespread, since they are successfully combined with objects of almost any style, with the exception of directions that are alien to straight lines: for example, baroque or art deco.

Rule two:
Vertical stripes visually increase the height of the ceiling, but at the same time reduce the overall volume of the room.

Moreover, the wider the stripes, the less the effect of space compression. Therefore, in cramped rooms with low ceilings, it is advisable to use large striped wallpaper..

It is even better if the borders of the stripes are blurry or at least not very contrasting. Such stripes will “raise” the ceiling and will not affect the perception of the room’s size in any way. But the color combinations of alternating stripes are equally involved both in the “rise” of the ceiling, and in the “approach of the walls to each other.” If the colors of adjacent stripes do not differ much from each other, then the effect of vertical expansion and horizontal compression will be weak. This is the case when we can say that there are almost no stripes, they are not noticeable.

Large spots

Another option for wallpaper designs is large spots, for example, designs that imitate animal skins. These contrasting and crisp images are immediately striking and interpreted quite unambiguously. Therefore, it is undesirable to paste over the whole room with wallpaper with such an “aggressive” pattern – as a rule, such decors are successfully used for room zoning, ie. convenient for highlighting any specific part of it. They can paste over one wall or even a separate section of the wall. Wallpaper spots can have an ornamental, ordered or, on the contrary, chaotic or pseudo-chaotic appearance. Large spots – as well as large “flowers” – visually narrow the space – the more, the more clearly they are written.

Rule three:
Vague large spots have a pronounced decorative effect.

They create a feeling of play of light and shadow, for many evoking associations with sea waves playing in the sun. And yet, I repeat, you should not experiment on your nerves and paste over the whole room with a “large spot”.

Spotted backgrounds

Spotted backgrounds are small intermittent spots of two or more shades and resemble spray from a spray bottle. This grainy décor is the brainchild of the twentieth century and is limited to contemporary styles. But such a pattern can be used on almost any wall..

Rule four:
small specks-droplets perfectly mask and conceal even significant surface flaws.

They scatter light rays in a variety of directions, hiding the errors that remain under them. On the contrary, plain wallpaper can be glued only on fairly even walls, otherwise all bumps and defects will be visible. In this case, the dense and embossed texture of the wallpaper will help to hide the flaws..

Plain wallpaper

Plain wallpaper or wallpaper with a barely marked pattern is artistically neutral and is the background that emphasizes interior items, creating the desired depth of perception. In a properly furnished room, plain wallpaper does not seem boring and featureless at all. Smooth backgrounds will best emphasize the expressiveness of all furnishings – graceful outlines and sculptural forms of furniture, the beauty of figurines, flower arrangements and living indoor plants.

Rule five:
If your plans include further wall decoration – for example, you are going to hang paintings, photographs, decorate the room with decorative panels or some wall installations – then it is best to choose plain wallpaper..

At the same time, it is not particularly important which design style will be discussed. Naturally, for classic interiors you need to select wallpaper in pastel colors, in addition, their belonging to the classics can easily be indicated by texture – characteristic embossing, graceful monograms … shades. On the contrary, if there are already sufficiently clearly marked decorative forms on the wallpaper, then they will inevitably begin to conflict with the surrounding objects, and the expressiveness of the latter will most likely be lost. There are, however, cases of perfect coincidence in form (very rarely – in color) of a pattern on the wallpaper and some piece of furniture. But these are just the exceptions that only confirm the rule.

Text: Sergey Makarenko