Black Wallpaper

A near-black ground turns a Morris pattern moody. Fruit Dark sets William Morris's fruiting branches, first issued around 1866, on charcoal, and Sweet Briar Dark lets John Henry Dearle's wild roses float on midnight. Our dark Morris wallpapers are Fruit Dark and Sweet Briar Dark.

See all William Morris wallpaper designs

Choosing black wallpaper

Where it works

Black works hardest in rooms you use after dark, or only pass through. A dining room. A downstairs loo. The hallway, or the one wall behind a bed. Daylight isn't really the problem, size is. Paper a small north-facing room in Midnight Bouquet, black filling every gap between the blooms, and it'll feel like a box. That room needs some light kept on the wall. White Anemone has leaves pale enough to share the wall with its flowers, and Moonlit Willow goes further still, cream and sage leaves covering the black almost completely.

Picking between the designs

So you're really choosing how much black shows. White Vine is fine white line over solid black (Silver Vine too), and the wall stays dark, the pattern reading as texture. Peony Bouquet and Ink Peony flip that round. Big blooms lit up against the dark, the ground showing only in slivers. Leaf designs land in between. Rust Chrysanthemum has slate-grey oak leaves, and the Morris Fruit Dark hangs its lemons and pomegranates on charcoal. Not after a floral at all? Bouquet Silhouette and Portrait Collage are cut-paper figures in black and white. Bar Shelf lines up bottles on dark shelving, and so does Apothecary Shelf.

Related

The darkest florals also sit in dark botanical wallpaper and moody floral wallpaper. Graphic black and white is over in monochrome wallpaper. And if the look you're after has a name, it's probably whimsigoth.