Chinoiserie Wallpaper

Chinoiserie wallpaper takes the birds, blossoms, pagodas and dragons of Chinese export art and sets them loose on a wall. The twenty-one designs here run from dense songbird-and-peony branches on navy and teal grounds to pale scenic toiles and a pair of pop-colored tiger designs.

Choosing chinoiserie wallpaper

Where it works

Give chinoiserie a wall people sit and look at: behind a bed, across a dining room, or inside a powder room where the door closes on a complete scene. The navy of Apple Songbird holds up in strong daylight and makes an evening room feel enclosed. The cream and pale grey grounds of Peony Thicket and Silver Songbird stop a north-facing room from closing in.

Picking between the designs

Start with how much ground shows. Apple Songbird and Peony Thicket are packed edge to edge and read as one rich texture from across the room. Pagoda Toile and Scarlet Finch leave bare ground between the motifs, so they stay calm in a small space. The three dragon designs, Celestial Dragons, Fire Cloud and Jade Serpent, are the least floral of the set and suit a study or a hallway. Tigers & Dragons and the Tiger Magnolia Mural are flat-color pop chinoiserie for a nursery. Because the branches and birds are large, paste-the-wall LUXE Traditional gives you time to match them across the seams of a whole room; Peel and Stick is fine for a single wall.

Related

Chinoiserie sits between bird wallpaper, toile wallpaper and floral wallpaper. For the history of the style, from export porcelain to hand-painted panels, read What is chinoiserie.