Grey Wallpaper

Fifty-nine grey wallpapers, and grey here is usually a ground: slate blue-grey under silver willow leaves, warm mid-grey under gold koi, woven linen grey under white blossom, charcoal-navy under ivory lotus. The pattern on top decides whether the room reads cool or warm.

Choosing grey wallpaper

Where it works

Grey suits the rooms that have to work with whatever furniture arrives: a rental bedroom, a home office, a hallway that connects rooms in different colours. Linen Blossom and Trailing Rose leave wide stretches of bare woven grey, so they read almost as a textured paint. Willow Leaves and the Morris Larkspur Blue are blue-greys with pale leaves, cool and calm, right for a bedroom. The koi designs, Koi Pond and Golden Koi, put metallic gold fish on slate and mid-grey and belong in a bathroom or a powder room where the scales can catch light.

Picking between the designs

Check the temperature first. Blue-greys: Willow Leaves, Larkspur Blue, Speckled Sparrow, Slate Peony. Warm greiges: Trailing Rose, Cream Cosmos, Sage Daisy with its ghosted grey-green foliage. Charcoal: Midnight Lotus, ivory lotus flowers along the base of a charcoal-navy damask, the darkest and most formal design here. Then decide whether the grey is doing the work or just holding it: in Linen Blossom the grey is the design; in Golden Koi and Peony Songbird it is a backdrop for gold and pink. The dog designs, Grey Dogs, Playful Paws and Watercolor Hounds, are the light-hearted end, for a mudroom or a child's bedroom.

Related

For paler grounds try white wallpaper or neutral wallpaper; the black-and-white end is in monochrome wallpaper. For pairing grey pattern with a painted wall, read Paint vs wallpaper.