Trends: Wall Coverings Make a Comeback

The old aphorism about hanging wallpaper and wedded bliss says if your marriage can survive hanging wallpaper, it can survive anything. In addition to its dire marital threat, wallpaper suffers from the misperception that it’s old-fashioned. For some homeowners, it conjures images of large floral prints from grandma’s house. But print wallpaper, fabric wall treatments, and other wall coverings are breaking free of their dated image and getting an ultra-stylish update. These days they can transform any room with wonderfully bold statements, brand-new textures, and a variety of application techniques to complement any fashion taste (and save any marriage). Here are some of the latest looks and tips on how to use them in your home. Wall coverings reenvisioned as art by Thibaut-Pomerantz Rural Modernist’s Jason O’Malley, an illustrator, graphic designer, and book designer by trade, designs and sells captivatingly whimsical wallpapers. O’Malley started by printing his art on wrapping paper, and then his artistic medium took off—up the walls of homes. O’Malley designed one of his first public wallpapers for the Kingston Design House in the Catskills. Titled Neo Victorian Nu Wave, it’s a super-cool montage of The Smiths’ Morrissey, Debbie Harry, Siouxsie Sioux, and Annie Lennox. Wallpaper adds art in large format and instantly makes a room happier. — Kerri Rosenthal, interior designer O’Malley also customizes paper for clients. “What sets me apart is that I love to do custom work and make a pattern for a client that is 100 percent unique. We discuss concepts and colorways, and then I design and draw it, get the pattern exactly where we want it, and source that to order.” The result is completely original and striking wallpapers that you won’t see elsewhere. Another feature of many of O’Malley’s wallpapers is that they are removable. He believes this negates peoples’ fears of commitment and allows for greater freedom of expression and experimentation with color. Since you can change a room’s decor in seconds, “You can easily put up a bolder pattern and swap it out when it comes time to sell,” he explains. Peel-and-stick wallpaper from Kerri Rosenthal Paris and New York–based Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz was raised amid avant-garde art: She grew up in her mother’s contemporary art gallery and trained as an art historian at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Over the past 25 years, she has become a specialist in vintage wallpaper decors, dating from the 13th century to the 1950s. What makes Thibaut-Pomerantz’s work even more special is that she presents these stunning antique wallpapers in a unique mural art form. Not only are the wallpapers huge, mounted murals that can be easily moved; they also can complement the most traditional of decors or juxtapose über-modern styles to bring out the utmost beauty in both. Jason O’Malley’s Binocular Birds (Rural Modernist collection) Thibaut-Pomerantz explains: “I do not consider them as wall coverings but as a unique mural art form. One panel on one wall can give you a note of originality, give you the orientation of the decoration of that room. It’s a point of departure. Putting these papers in unconventional, unexpected settings and combining them with different art forms is my approach.” Westport, Connecticut–based Kerri Rosenthal is both an interior designer and a wallpaper manufacturer. In addition to her paintings-inspired wallpaper, her eponymous lifestyle brand sells “paperless wallpaper,” a peel-and-stick version of her paper that is just as colorful but with a lot less commitment. “I am noticing great interest from my interior clients in using wall coverings throughout their homes,” she says, adding that she believes “it’s because the trend of minimal, organic, blank walls has left us feeling bland. Wallpaper is a way to add art and color in large format to a room, and instantly makes the space a bit happier, more polished, and adds visual texture to any room. We all need to feel happy when walking into our homes, almost transported from the kind of tough world we live in.” In sum, embrace the new wall coverings trend, be bold and daring, and if you need help applying paper, ask a friend . . . preferably one you’re not married to. Jason O’Malley’s Neo Victorian Nu Wave wallpaper. — by Michelle Sinclair Colman