Botanical Wallpaper

Choosing botanical wallpaper

Where it works

Botanicals are the calmest of the big collections, because leaves repeat more quietly than flowers. Orange Grove, sepia citrus branches on cream, and Golden Pomegranate, pale gold fruit on ivory, go almost anywhere, including a small bathroom. The dark ones, Cacao Pods in pink and sage on navy or White Vine on solid black, want a room with lamps: a dining room, a study or a cloakroom. Dusk Meadow, with its umbellifers climbing from the bottom edge, is drawn for a tall wall and looks best at a bedhead or up a stairwell.

Picking between the designs

Ask whether you want the plant drawn or painted. Drawn: Orange Grove and White Vine in fine line, Engraved Peony in woodcut, the Morris designs from Fruit Light to Willow Bough in their hatched Arts and Crafts line. Painted: Teal Daisy and Dusk Meadow on mottled plaster grounds, Sage Poppy inside dense sage foliage. Then the ground colour, which does most of the work in a botanical because the leaves are usually green either way: cream keeps a room light, sage and teal warm it, navy and black turn it into evening. Fruit is its own sub-group, lemons in Citrus Bough, pomegranates in Golden Pomegranate and the Morris Fruit pair, cacao in Cacao Pods.

Related

Flower-led designs are in floral wallpaper; the leafiest greens in green wallpaper; the dark-ground plants in dark botanical wallpaper. The movement behind the Morris designs is explained in our Arts and Crafts primer.