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Wallpaper might have fallen out of fashion for a spell, but after dipping into our 101-year-old archive, we’re not sure why. Its power to transform a room is undoubtable. Whether through daring patterns that showcase color or muted designs that hint at Mother Nature, these 23 wall coverings are all arresting additions to myriad types of residences.
Cleveland Whimsy
On the bucolic 29 acres tended to by New York– and Chicago-based Hollander Design Landscape Architects, a Cleveland family sought out New York architect Peter Pennoyer to build a country estate with a whitewashed brick façade that evokes the Arts and Crafts movement. That understated exterior takes a bolder turn inside, where Miles Redd and David Kaihoi of New York firm Redd Kaihoi juxtaposed the living room’s coffered 20-foot ceiling with glossy yellow walls, custom tufted sofas, and a gallery-style array of blue and white jars. The family room even features a bar underneath a red and white striped canopy. “It was about making a fantasy room that still works with the formality of the rest of the house,” Redd pointed out. Wallpaper also makes frequent appearances. A custom de Gournay wall covering in the dining room has a grand, dreamy feel that nods to Nancy Lancaster’s renowned Tobacco Bedroom and plays off the custom faux porphyry-top dining table surrounded by Russian neoclassical chairs upholstered in leopard-print velvet. The powder room, wrapped in blue-striped Kubilai’s Tent from Iksel Decorative Arts and accented with Circa Lighting sconces, is just as commanding.
Color Dominates a Chelsea Pied-à-Terre
Irish angel investor Maire Coulson was tired of the L.A. lifestyle she had embraced for the last decade, so, with her toddler son in tow, she embarked for London and made a 1930s town house in Chelsea their new home. The space had been updated previously with a long rear extension and full-length basement, and local practice Bryan O’Sullivan Studio made its mark on the interiors with loads of textures, colors, and patterns, such as a polished Marmorino plaster finish on the walls. In the back, a playroom and cinema room are especially animated thanks to O’Sullivan’s use of psychedelic wallpapers and fabrics. “These are spaces used sporadically through the day, so we wanted to make them feel cozy and welcoming, with a sense of playfulness—the perfect place to escape from a dull, rainy London day,” O’Sullivan recounted at the time. In the cinema room, the William Morris–inspired “Artemis Velvet” printed linen by House of Hackney, which also appears in the powder room, even sheathes the ceiling. A more sedate dusty pink–hued wall covering scheme from Bennison is found in the primary bedroom.
Creating a New Life in Milan
When JJ Martin of fashion and homewares brand La DoubleJ first moved into her Milan apartment on the third floor of a 1910 building (complete with a frescoed entryway and original marble intarsia floors), “I had a mattress on the floor of my bedroom, two vintage lamps, books stacked in the hallways, and had to learn to finally live with and allow myself to gestate in emptiness—no small feat for a verbal and visual maximalist,” she explained. Thanks to a bevy of local, design-savvy friends, the space began to take shape. In the midst of the pandemic, artist Jay Lohmann reimagined the Byzantine basilicas of Ravenna on the ceiling of the meditation room, while vintage bamboo chairs found their way into the dining room. Here, a custom tree of life wallpaper pattern sprung from an illustration by London artist Kirsten Synge takes center stage.
One Cotswolds Idyll
Seeking a change from their cramped London flat, artist, designer, and columnist Luke Edward Hall and his partner, designer Duncan Campbell, set their sights on a country bolthole. The one that captivated them most was a rental, a three-bedroom farmer’s cottage on the site of a Gloucestershire manor that also included a garden and small barn. “It’s a kid’s drawing of a house,” as Hall described it. “A gable, four windows, and a door.” The landlord gave them free rein to paint and paper as they saw fit, and Hall and Campbell did just that, turning to vibrant shades like mustard and emerald. They stocked up on antiques, gave Sanderson and Colefax chintzes new life as curtains, and designed velvet headboards. The main bedroom, dressed with vintage plaster lamps, is the one spot where pattern steals the show in the form of a Josef Frank–designed Svenskt Tenn wallpaper from the 1940s, its green foliage print mirroring the landscape beyond the window.
Maximalist Vibes in London
Miss Havisham and the ceilings of old, smoky French bistros were both references supplied to New York designer Patrick Mele before he overhauled the London flat belonging to former Phillips executive Sara Tayeb-Khalifa and her financier husband Hussein Khalifa. Located on the fourth floor of an 1880s building in Chelsea, “this is not a yoga-clothes, green-juice environment,” Mele explained. “It’s meant to be a place to have a glamorous time.” The color palette is therefore rich, featuring raspberry, chocolate, and teal. The decor is layered, bringing together a vintage Chinese carpet belonging to Tayeb-Khalifa’s mother, a rattan table lamp, and Turkish ceramic tiles. A mural by Voutsa sets a fantastical tone in the hallway, paving the way to a moody mix of slipper chairs, red crystal chandeliers, and damask wall coverings by Adelphi Paper Hangings.
A Modernist Marfa Wonder
Intrigued by the desert landscape of western Texas, photographer Douglas Friedman, who normally splits his time between Los Angeles and New York, set out for Marfa and snagged 10 acres of land. There, he built a simple box of a home with a modular system of glulam timber, steel connectors, and structural insulated panels that were all shipped to the site and assembled by contractor Billy Marginot. Even the pool was fashioned out of a shipping container. Natural light pours through the walls of windows, reflecting off furniture from an A-list roster of designer friends, including lamps by Steven Gambrel and tables from Nicole Hollis and Brigette Romanek, as well as Friedman’s own cowhide carpets for his collection with Kyle Bunting. “I had this fantasy that I could live in a totally minimalist way, but I’m just not that person. I couldn’t resist having a little fun,” he said. That’s why the stone table by Dutch designer Lex Pott in the entryway is accompanied by bronze-detailed concrete planters, taxidermy pigeons are attached to swing-arm lamps, and evocative de Gournay landscapes paper the walls of the guest rooms.
Adventurous Patterns at Play Outside Los Angeles
Frances Merrill, founder of L.A. studio Reath Design, was pleased when she realized that her client Katie Jordan, cofounder of the youth aid organization Foster a Dream, shared her zest for colors and patterns. What Merrill didn’t love so much was the existing angular architecture of Jordan’s Altadena home. “Although I appreciated the broad expanses of glass and the connection to nature, I didn’t like how masculine it felt. I honestly wasn’t sure if it was possible to make it cozy,” she admitted. But Merrill triumphed, weaving in warm elements, like a chaise covered in Rose Cumming florals for the living room, a multicolored linen curtain in the pool room, and a custom plaid banquette and bright green cabinetry in the kitchen. She also emboldened the front garden with an ultramarine sofa. Throughout, Merrill painted exterior and interior beams burgundy to conjure Japanese maples. In the dining room they are complemented by a Josef Hoffmann chair and walnut benches brandishing checkerboard patterns, as well as Jennifer Shorto’s cheerful orange- and leaf-print wallpaper.
A London House Fittingly Dominated by Wallpaper
Considering her father is de Gournay founder Claud Cecil Gurney, it is not surprising that Hannah Cecil Gurney, the company’s director of global marketing and development, opted to fill her Victorian home in London’s Battersea with wallpaper. Hannah, who shares the residence with her husband Eddie Harden and their three children, largely opted for new designs throughout. There is the coral chinoiserie in the couple’s bedroom, for instance, as well as a paper donning elegant pink flamingos in the primary bath to which Hannah added an ombré yellow effect at the top that also lines the shower. “I was quoted some crazy price for marble, and I remember my dad saying, ‘That’s ridiculous. Just put wallpaper inside, glaze it, and install a glass shower on top.’ It makes the room feel much bigger because the shower kind of becomes invisible,” she recalled to AD. Even the children’s bathroom features wallpaper, a custom ode to Hyde Park and Bemelmans Bar at New York’s Carlyle Hotel, which melds such delightful vignettes as rope-skipping squirrels and soccer-playing foxes.
One Parisian Indoor Garden
“When I first walked into this dining room, with its many windows and an apse, it instantly reminded me of a family sunporch from my childhood,” designer Tom Scheerer recalled. The dining room, which, he added, is all about shapes and plants, is found in the two-bedroom apartment he rents in Paris, overlooking the Seine on Île Saint-Louis. When Scheerer isn’t in town, chances are that one of the constantly traveling American friends he shares the space with is. The lease dictated that it was verboten to remove the living room mural and the balcony’s blood orange sunshades, but Scheerer was free to bring in the likes of a leather ottoman from New York and fluted Indian armoires and to convert the dining room into a greenhouse of sorts. Along with potted trees and cascading ferns is Quadrille’s trompe l’oeil “Lyford Trellis” wallpaper in a custom vivid green.
Blending Patterns in a Kentucky Farmhouse
Not far from Louisville, where they also have a home, Stephen Reily, former director of the Speed Art Museum, and his wife, historian Emily Bingham, like to decamp with the family to Indian Bean, their nearly 400-acre country compound. It’s a quirky site, with a feedlot turned garden and a pool cabana housed in a corrugated metal structure designed by San Diego–based Roy McMakin. Inside the Arts and Crafts–style residence with roofs reminiscent of pagodas, New York firm RP Miller decked it out with motley colors and prints. There is a Josef Frank sofa upholstered in bright botanicals, for instance, as well as a series of African Dutch wax textiles enlivening the study and cement tiles and red tube lights in the kitchen. In the dining room, Marthe Armitage’s hand-blocked “Old Man’s Beard” wallpaper provides a floral backdrop for a Jonathan Muecke table, Marcel Breuer chairs, and Paavo Tynell pendants. “When it’s done well, all those patterns practically become neutral in a sense,” said RP Miller founder Rodman Primack.
Summoning the Tropics in London
In the West London home where model and actress Poppy Delevingne lives with her husband James Cook, there is a profusion of bold colors on display, including the calming pink primary bedroom and the powder room, a petite space enveloped in CW Stockwell’s iconic Martinique banana-leaf print and accented with a custom sink by local designer Joanna Plant and Lefroy Brooks fittings. The vibrant jungle-like pattern, conceived in the 1940s by illustrator Albert Stockdale, most famously covers the halls, stairwells, and Fountain Coffee Room inside the Beverly Hills Hotel as part of architect Paul Revere Williams’s 1949 renovation.
A San Francisco Home Bar Gets the Wallpaper Treatment
For some five years, Los Angeles architecture practice Marmol Radziner and Sausalito-based designer Charles de Lisle collaborated closely on the rebuild of a Schubart and Friedman–designed 1963 San Francisco residence. Belonging to tech-world couple Aaron and Jessica Sittig, who were highly involved in the design process, the house comprises stacked rectilinear redwood and glass volumes that project from a steep hillside. Inside, views of the San Francisco Bay engulf the expansive living-dining area, which is crowned with a retractable skylight. A brass-top bar nestled inside an indigo-dyed ash cabinet by de Lisle makes a big impression, thanks to a custom de Gournay silk wall covering evoking a Japanese pine forest. Throughout, hinges, knobs, and pulls remade in their original midcentury spirit mingle with contemporary elements like the Belgian bluestone sink in the children’s bathroom crafted by British furniture designer Max Lamb and de Lisle’s welcoming strawberry print in the guest room. “We’re interested in how something great comes to be—whether it’s a perfectly placed tree, a piece of software, or a chair,” Jessica said.
Expanding a Greenwich Village Town House
Considering Courtney Phillips Stern presides over her own interior design firm, and that her husband Nicholas S.G. Stern (son of architect Robert A.M. Stern) leads the residential contracting company Stern Projects, the couple revamped their Greenwich Village town house with confidence. Courtney and Nicholas first bought the four-story 1847 Greek Revival building in an estate sale in 2002 and rented out the upper floors. But, once their first child was born, they decided to keep it in the family and ultimately give it an upgrade. “There were many physical issues but also historic ones, and we wanted to make something that would respect history yet not feel like a period home,” Randy Correll, a partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects, explained to Architectural Digest. There is now an enlarged kitchen, a double-height sitting area that connects to the parlor above by way of a 1930s French-inspired staircase, and a penthouse guest suite on the roof. Upstairs, wallpaper plays an integral role in the bedrooms. In the primary suite, a soft blue hand-painted Gracie print contrasts with the minimalist fireplace and black-and-white Frank J. Boros artwork, while an Osborne & Little floral design enchants one of the children’s bedrooms.
A Southern Transplant
After socialite and art collector Patricia Altschul sold Southerly, the massive Long Island estate she shared with her late husband, the financier Arthur G. Altschul, she relocated to Charleston, South Carolina, to reside in a Greek Revival mansion surrounded by greenery—an experience she described as “living in a Palladian villa in Italy.”
The 9,500-square-foot, 10-bedroom residence dates from the 1850s, and, although it might be smaller than Southerly, it’s no less grand thanks to the late Mario Buatta, who designed both. At turns a library and suite of apartments, the house was restored by local contractor Richard Marks, who revived historic details like plaster ceiling medallions. Buatta invigorated it through a number of elements—his longtime collaborator, the decorative painter Haleh Atabeigi, for instance, stenciled the entry floor with an octagonal pattern that draws from Victorian tilework, and Buatta chose a soothing apple green to swathe the walls of the drawing room. Southerly had a strong impact on Altschul’s life, so certain aspects of it were recreated here, such as in the dining room. The English table underneath the 19th-century Waterford chandelier was brought down from Long Island, as was the Zuber wallpaper illuminating Revolutionary War scenes.
Unexpected Pleasures in the Greenwich Village
A billiards table on the top-floor lounge, an English-style garden, and a quartzite-clad pool and skylight-crowned steam room in the basement are among the more unconventional highlights of the rambling five-story home that designer Laura Santos crafted for her family with New York– and Frankfurt-based 1100 Architect. (The residence is a union of three rowhouses in New York’s Greenwich Village.) Past the entry’s wing chairs are the kitchen and sitting area; above them, the double-height living room with a centerpiece travertine fireplace, as well as the library, media room, and formal dining room. The latter shimmers in de Gournay gold wallpaper, hand-painted with delicate plum blossoms that telegraph Japan. A BDDW table and Hervé Van Der Straeten light fixtures with Paul Frankl chairs from the late 1940s are also mixed in. “I love the clean lines and sculptural forms of midcentury furniture,” Santos pointed out.
One Caribbean Playground
A Houston family had already turned to Miles Redd to perk up their primary residence, so, when they snatched up Pineapple Hill, a five-bedroom 5,500-square-foot house at the posh Lyford Cay Club in the Bahamas, they called upon the New York designer again. Redd, who at the time was creative director of Oscar de la Renta Home, said that he “envisioned it as part Babe Paley… with a dash of Texas brio and a splash of daiquiri.” This led to converting the octagonal entry hall into a sitting area where Timothy Oulton mirrors are placed against silvery Fromental wallpaper. The floor is a cerulean hue and is bolstered by a gray-and-white compass motif—the handiwork of decorative painter Chris Pearson. Redd also stenciled over the television room’s existing grasscloth wall covering with an abstract Moorish pattern, lined a hallway with plaster palm trees, and theatrically tented various rooms in various fabrics, including the dining room, which is characterized by a graphic zigzag textile.
Designing for a Crowd
Philanthropic, art-loving couple Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. and Hilary Geary Ross intentionally designed their Hamptons and Palm Beach estates with lavish entertaining in mind. Both interiors came courtesy the late Mario Buatta, who also dolled up the Rosses’ Manhattan penthouse. Buatta originally worked on the Southampton summer abode, an early-1900s Colonial Revival, in the 1970s for Hilary and her first husband. Decades later, he rejuvenated it with an expansive flagstone-paved loggia (where some 80 guests can mingle on dark green wicker chairs and lounge on blue-and-white paisley upholstered sofas) and placed a copper-top pagoda in between the tennis court and relocated swimming pool. Their property in Palm Beach, where Hilary and Wilbur spend most of their days, now includes a guesthouse designed by Jupiter, Florida–based Kirchhoff & Associates Architects. That space also doubles as a party pavilion with a 41-foot-long elliptical ballroom. “If you’re going to have a ballroom, square is boring,” Buatta remarked. Wallpaper adds significant character to both homes. In Southampton, the dining room evokes a garden vibe thanks to Haleh Atabeigi’s hand-painted wallpaper, while a Gracie print lends a guest room in the Palm Beach pavilion a chinoiserie air.
A Modern Expression of the South in North Carolina
Melisse Shaban, now chief executive officer of the beauty brand Virtue Labs, and her partner, IBM executive Jane Elizabeth Phillips, loved the location and four-bedroom layout of the newly built home they bought in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area, but were decidedly unhappy about its ornate château vibes. “I don’t know what style the house was trying to emulate, but it was more French than Southern,” said Russell Groves of New York studio Groves & Co., who was hired to give it new life. “The challenge was to make it relevant.” So, down came the oppressive Baroque wallpaper and chandeliers, and up went items like the Phillip Jeffries hemp wall covering and vintage Edward Wormley chairs buoyed by Jim Thompson silk in the dining room. In the living room, a Mansour Modern silk and wool rug with an abstracted French Moroccan trellis motif inspired a similar pattern elsewhere. Consider the black-and-white Schumacher print sheathing the powder room’s walls, complemented by a Waterworks sink vanity and Vaughan sconce.
Falling for New England
Victoria Hagan became smitten with a circa-1980s Georgian-style house in Southport, Connecticut, and, shortly after, the New York– and Palm Beach–based designer purchased the home and got to work on renovations. For nine months, Hagan, her husband (the media investor Michael Berman), and their kids camped out in the property’s guesthouse, while she knocked down walls and swapped out marble floors with wide-plank wood. Now, the entry is graced with a mirror the couple purchased on their honeymoon to Venice, a table Hagan sourced at an antique show, and 15 Hiroshi Sugimoto photographs. Beyond, the comfortable rooms meld pieces from the Victoria Hagan Home Collection with such treasures as a damask-slipcovered English wing chair and Swedish brass chandelier from the 19th century. A blue-and-white Gracie wallpaper print infuses the powder room, outfitted with an Urban Archaeology pedestal sink and Waterworks fittings, with a breezy garden feel. “As a designer, I don’t feel the need to simply fill space,” Hagan relayed to Architectural Digest. “Especially in Connecticut, the beauty I feel most strongly is the beauty of a village green.”
A Power Couple Settles Into New York
When Democratic advisor turned journalist George Stephanopoulos was asked to co-anchor Good Morning America, he and his family left behind their Colonial Revival abode in Washington, D.C., and went straight to New York. To vivify the family’s new residence, a three-bedroom prewar on the Upper East Side, Stephanopoulos and his wife, actress and writer Ali Wentworth, turned to their good friend, Los Angeles–based Michael S. Smith. The designer, who also transformed the Obama-era White House, layered in numerous striking features, including the pagoda étagère in the foyer, backdropped by a cool blue high-gloss Elizabeth Dow wallpaper, the Bibikibad carpet in the living room, and the dining room’s Regency table and George III ladder-back chairs. “And our [primary] suite, with its hand-painted wallpaper and Italian neoclassical walnut bed, is exquisite,” pointed out Wentworth, referencing the Gracie chinoiserie pattern that softens the room.
A Marriage of Styles in Richmond
“She likes French and Italian furniture, and he likes English and American things,” said New York designer Bunny Williams about Helga and Floyd Gottwald Jr. So, when working on the couple’s home in Richmond, Virginia—a Georgian-style rebuild of an original 1950s structure—Williams deftly blended Continental and Colonial features throughout the 18,000-square-foot residence. Punctuated by a floating staircase at one end, the entry serves as a gallery for Floyd’s collection of Frederic Remington bronzes and leads to the living room and dining rooms, where European antiques, including French Art Moderne armchairs and an 18th-century Italian chandelier, are plentiful. Williams also integrated wallpaper for an aura of elegance. In the primary suite, a hand-painted Gracie chinoiserie print is an ethereal companion to the carved four-poster bed that takes inspiration from a 1750s design. Another Gracie pattern, this time a lush trellis, instills the sunroom with a feeling of the outdoors, compounded by a topiary planted in an antique urn.
An Upper East Side Abode
Audrey Hepburn’s timeless grace was one of the inspirations guiding the revamp of Nina Bauer’s home. The contemporary art collector, daughter of Seaman Schepps jewelry co-owner Jay Bauer, was eager for her family’s apartment, situated in a 1926 building on the Upper East Side of New York, to return to its sophisticated roots. Architect David Ruff, then of Design Laboratories, and designer Penny Drue Baird of Dessins came to the rescue with the likes of custom lacquered cabinetry, blue-gray stained oak paneling, and a powder room sink flaunting a Moroccan pattern carved into Corian. One of the standouts is the dining room, where a glimmering swath of hand-painted Gracie wallpaper depicts a cluster of swaying trees. That feature pairs with a table designed by Mark Luedeman, midcentury Austrian chairs, and 1940s Italian bronze chandeliers. “Nina wanted the flexibility to set up the room with one or two tables,” Baird told Architectural Digest at the time. “The placement of the chandeliers makes the area as versatile as possible.”
English Countryside Charms on Long Island
“There are dayrooms and morning rooms and evening rooms,” said the late Mario Buatta of the sprawling abode on the north shore of Long Island that he turned into a showcase of Georgian splendor. Loaded with antiques from New York and London, the 30-room house, complete with four terraces, invites guests into a living room marrying a white damask sofa with an 18th-century carved wood mantel and Lancaster yellow walls. But the red-glazed library or a green-painted wicker chair in the sunroom are equally enticing. Meals unfold in the dining room, where a 19th-century crystal chandelier descends over a Florian Papp table ringed with upholstered Chippendale chairs and floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the garden. In between them, wallpaper depicting lush landscapes reinforces the pastoral theme.
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