Moody Floral Wallpaper

Fifty-six moody florals, which here means painted blooms on a ground that has gone dark: peonies lit from one side on pure black, wool-embroidered peonies on black, daisies on a near-black teal plaster, copper oak leaves on brown-black. A few pale ones sneak in, mauve poppies on cream among them, but the mood is evening.

Choosing moody floral wallpaper

Where it works

Moody florals are for the rooms where you switch the lamps on: a dining room, a library, a street-facing bedroom, a downstairs cloakroom. Midnight Bouquet and Painted Bouquet are the classic version, old-master bouquets with black filling every gap, and they make a dining room feel like a box of lit flowers. If the room has real daylight and you still want the mood, choose one that keeps pale foliage on the wall: White Anemone, where sage and pewter leaves take as much of the eye as the flowers, or Wild Daisy, cream blooms on a distressed teal plaster that reads lighter than black.

Picking between the designs

The difference between these is how the flowers were made. Painted: Midnight Bouquet, Painted Bouquet, Ink Peony, big blooms with shaded petals and a light source. Stitched: Stitched Peonies, dense wool embroidery in magenta and orange around yellow centres, which gives the wall a textile surface even in print. Drawn: Peony Bouquet, with antique-gold scrollwork linking the blooms, closer to a Victorian paper than a painting. Then the colour behind the black: Brown Leaves is warm, copper oak leaves on brown-black; Gold Artichoke is cold, crimson thistles in a teal cage. Mauve Poppy is the one for someone who wants the drama of the flowers but a cream wall.

Related

The darkest grounds are also in black wallpaper and dark botanical wallpaper; the same density in a period key is in Victorian wallpaper. We picked out ten of these in Best moody floral wallpaper.