Abstract Wallpaper

Fifty-one abstract wallpapers, most of them made with a brush: marbled flame-stitch bands, lavender sweeps with gold breaks, tiger stripes broken into crosshatched strokes, ink surf, terrazzo chips on navy. A few are cut paper instead, women's profiles and silhouettes tiled edge to edge in black and white.

Choosing abstract wallpaper

Where it works

Abstracts belong where a floral would look wrong: a modern living room, a study, a hallway with a concrete or pale wood floor. Lavender Sweep, petal forms in periwinkle and gold, and Washed Squares are soft enough for a bedroom. Painted Bridges, flame-stitch peaks in pink, vermillion and mustard, and Tiger Strokes are loud enough that one wall is plenty, behind a sofa or a bed. The ink wave designs, Black Wave, Rolling Waves and Ink Surf, are the ones for a bathroom or a cloakroom, pattern without colour.

Picking between the designs

The collection sorts by the tool that made the mark. Brushed: Painted Bridges, Lavender Sweep, Rolling Surf in burnt orange and aubergine, Tiger Strokes. Inked: the wave family, hatched swells row on row. Scattered: Jewel Terrazzo, chips of fuchsia and emerald on midnight navy, and Leopard Confetti. Cut: Portrait Collage and Bouquet Silhouette, black and white cut-paper figures and vases tiled with almost no ground showing, the most graphic things we print. Retro Figures is the odd one, screen-printed people in orange on jade green, halfway between an abstract and a story. If you are unsure, pick by the number of colours: the waves have one, Lavender Sweep has three, Jewel Terrazzo has five.

Related

The straight-edged designs are in geometric wallpaper, the wetter ones in watercolor wallpaper, and the 1950s shapes in mid-century modern wallpaper. Ten favourites are in Best abstract wallpaper.