Choosing botanical wallpaper

Where it works

Leaf designs are the calm middle of this range, and they belong in the rooms you use by daylight: a kitchen, a living room, a hallway, a bathroom. Fan Rows and Pinwheels, black-line ginkgo and small daisies on pale grounds, hold the light in a small room. Prickly Parade, cacti in sage, dusty pink and terracotta watercolour, suits a kitchen or a sunroom. The dark pair, Moth Meadow and Toadstool Wood, are for a lamplit study or dining room. Harbour Sketch and Blue Shore, palm toiles in teal and soft blue line, go in a bedroom.

Picking between the designs

Ask what kind of plant. Garden: Pinwheels, Field Scatter, Amber Garland, Full Marigold, Rust Roses, Citrus Bough. Woodland: Moth Meadow, Toadstool Wood, Crow Botanical with its corvid's harvest. Desert: Prickly Parade. Coast: Harbour Sketch, Blue Shore, Cove Sketch, Beach Finds, the Watercolor Collector's Shell. Then the drawing: fine line for the toiles and Fan Rows, flat colour for Pinwheels and Market Day, watercolour for Prickly Parade and the shells, tapestry density for Moth Meadow. The cream-ground designs repeat quietly and can paper a room; the two dark ones are better on one wall.

Related

Blooms rather than leaves are on the floral wallpaper page, the palms in tropical wallpaper, the moths and toadstools also in green and sage wallpaper. For a botanical in a steamy room, read Can you wallpaper a bathroom.