Scenic Wallpaper

Seventeen scenic wallpapers, each one a place: pagodas beside water on cream, a sage-green river map with rowers and a stone bridge, stags under an oak on pale mint, a pink landscape of palms and low cottages, swallows over banked white cloud. Views rather than motifs, though they still repeat.

Choosing scenic wallpaper

Where it works

A scene needs viewing distance, a wall you can read from across the room: the end of a hallway, the wall opposite a bed, a dining room, a stairwell. Sky Swallows and Stone Swallow open a room outward with their banked clouds. River Map, with hundreds of tiny figures, boats and a bridge on parchment, is for a downstairs loo or a study where people will get close and find things. Deer Park and Stag Woodland, engraved in a single green on pale mint, are quiet enough to sleep beside. The Tiger Magnolia mural prints as one continuous image and needs a full wall to itself.

Picking between the designs

Sort them by drawing. Engraved single-colour scenes are the toile group: Pagoda Toile in cobalt on cream, Deer Park, Stag Woodland, Pagoda Garden. Silhouette scenes: Indigo Lakeside, rowers, swimmers and a striped parasol cut in navy against pale blue water, and Swallow Flight. Painted scenes: Palm Cottage in dusty pink, Teal Songbird on grey plaster, and the maps, River Map and Village Map. Sky scenes: Sky Swallows, Night Clouds, Grey Cloud, where the subject is weather. The toiles and silhouettes are two-colour and easy to match paint to; the painted scenes bring four or five colours and will lead the room.

Related

The engraved scenes are also in toile wallpaper, the pagodas in chinoiserie wallpaper, the swallows in bird wallpaper. For where the scenic toile came from, read What is toile de Jouy.