Pink Wallpaper

Pink wallpapers, and almost none of them sugary. Most put the pink in the flowers rather than the ground: dusty poppies inside sage foliage, blush peonies on grey-blue, magenta against near-black. The pink-ground designs, Chinoiserie Branch on rose and the fan tiles of Scallop Tiles, are the exceptions.

Choosing pink wallpaper

Where it works

Pink is easier to live with than people expect. Put it on cream with green leaves round it, the way Sage Poppy and Cream Poppy do, and it looks like a garden, not a nursery. We'd hang either one in a kitchen, or all the way down a hall. Blush Peony is blush on grey (Peony Songbird too), calmer and more composed, so that's the bedroom one. The hot pinks are another animal. Charcoal Peony burns on near-black, and Scallop Tiles throws hot pink against teal. Keep those for a powder room, or a dining room where the jolt of colour is the whole idea.

Picking between the designs

Ask one thing first. Is the pink the flower, or is it the wall? Usually it's the flower: poppy petals in Sage Poppy and Mauve Poppy, fat peonies in Plum Tapestry, a wild rose in Folk Rose. A pink wall is rarer, and louder. Chinoiserie Branch lays a rose-pink ground right across the wall and perches birds and a peony on it, while Tigers & Dragons prowls over blush in flat colour. After that, look at the leaves, because they set the temperature. Sage and olive keep pink cool and a little country. The near-black leaves in Peach Dahlia and Charcoal Peony turn it to evening. Want only a hint of pink? The Morris Pimpernel Pink tucks blush flower heads inside slate-blue leaves, barely there.

Related

Most of these also turn up in floral wallpaper. The cream-ground sprigs sit in cottagecore wallpaper as well, and the dark-ground pinks in moody floral wallpaper.