Ever since wallpaper made its comeback a few years ago, its popularity has surged to become a key trend that doesn’t look like it’s subsiding anytime soon. Whatever your taste, there is wallpaper designed for everyone, from traditional floral designs, contemporary geometric, to 3D statement pieces and textured options. In this blog, we focus on some of the things you might want to consider in order to make sure you choose a wallpaper that complements your living space perfectly.
Which type of wallpaper is best for the living room?
Before you go shopping for wallpaper, you need to think about your living area, how you use it, the practicality of the space, and your style. If you are looking to create a formal look, you might opt for large scale patters and bold colours. Alternatively, if you want a more relaxed, fun style, you might decide small, decorative motifs suit your room better. If your living room is quite large and used for multiple purposes (computer/work area, gaming, TV area, reading corner etc) you might consider using decorative wallpaper borders to zone off areas. If your living room is primarily used for relaxing in, you might want to steer clear of a busy, repetitive pattern and opt for a pastural feature wall or a simple, calming pattern that helps keep your mind still.
Colour and pattern have real influence on the mood created in a room. Soft, cool colours such as cool blue shades suggest tranquillity and have a calming effect when used as the main colour of a room. Organic green hues are a great choice for creating a natural, earthy tones. Earthy greens combined with off white tones enhance a sense of balance and can be great for softening a busy pattern or feature wall too. Warm colours – reds, yellows and oranges are uplifting and warming – a great choice if you are quite a creative person and use your living area for arts and crafts or just love entertaining lots of visitors.
In recent years, we have seen shades of grey growing in popularity. Using different tones of grey can create a chic look and works particularly well when you add pops of brighter colour – green, pink, or orange accessories work a treat in all rooms of the house and adds a warming touch. However, if you want to keep the atmosphere calm and relaxing to create an anxiety busting environment, then white with grey tones will work really well.
In short, if you primarily want to use your living room for binge watching Netflix and putting your feet up, steer clear of a bright red, highly pattered wallpaper on every wall of the room!
Make use of light where you can
Whether it is a dark corner of an open plan living area or a windowless space, look for wallpaper that will reflect light around the room. In a similar way to using mirrors to make a room feel bigger and brighter, metallic wallpaper or iridescent inks are equally reflective. The metallic details offer reflective properties that helps light move throughout your living area. Use it to bounce around the light you do have to brighten the room and create the illusion of openness. A great trick for small spaces.
On the other hand, if you have oodles of natural light and are trying to make your room feel cosier, give dark colours a whirl – they absorb light, making walls appear closer and the room will feel more furnished. Textured surfaces work in a similar way.
Should I wallpaper the whole room or just one wall?
There will be some designers that say if you are going to commit to wallpapering a room, then go for it and wallpaper the whole space. Alternatively, there are plenty of designers that disagree and feel a papered feature wall is the way to go. The fact is, both options can work, it just depends on the wallpaper pattern, the size of the room, what other patterns will be going in the room and your personal preference.
A big pattern on all walls can actually make a small space fee larger and can breathe new energy into a room. Often, the compromise is choosing something that boasts a bold print but has mellow, sophisticated, neutral colour tones to it, so things don’t get too crazy!
Choosing a wallpaper with small, evenly spaced dots in bright colours is a great way of keeping things bright and fun, but not too over the top. If your space has a nice natural light to open up the space and make it feel bigger, a bolder colour palette or pattern will tend to work well.
Don’t forget, your ceiling counts! Why not choose some bright, funky, patterned ceiling wallpaper and make the ceiling your feature! It is a great way to add colour without overwhelming your space – particularly if you have tall ceilings. Wall murals are another option to consider for their eye-catching appeal and they make a great talking point too – perfect for living rooms.
How many rolls of wallpaper do I need?
Our handy calculator will provide you with a guide on how to measure for wallpaper. Once upon a time there used to be just the standard UK roll size. These days wallpaper can come in wide-width sizes ranging from 62cms to 1 metre. This means that calculating the number of rolls of wallpaper you need will depend mainly on the size of the roll, both the length and width so, once you have chosen your wallpaper design make sure you make a note of the roll size (width and length) as it will vary for each product.
You will also need to take into consideration the pattern repeat (if you have one), mainly the vertical pattern repeat, and also make allowances for cutting around obstacles such as windows and doors.
The width of a standard roll of wallcovering is 52cms, the length is 10.05m.
When measuring your walls (measure the perimeter of your room), we recommend including your windows and doors in your estimate just to be on the safe side. Measure the height of the walls from skirting to ceiling. When you have these two measurements plug them into the calculator below and it will tell you how many rolls of wallpaper you need based on the size of a standard roll (52cm x 10.05m)
Hopefully, you now have a few wallpaper ideas, a few considerations to ponder and an idea of how many rolls of wall covering you will need. Don’t forget, if you would like some stylish new timber windows or doors to complement your makeover, you know where we are!
