Choosing vintage wallpaper

Where it works

Vintage pattern gives a plain room a past, and it likes rooms with a bit of architecture: a hallway, a dining room or a bedroom with a headboard. The toiles, Dune Scene, Harbour Sketch and Blue Shore, are fine line on cream and suit a bedroom or a bathroom. Bronze Shells, Deco fans in taupe and bronze on near-black, suits a cloakroom, or a bar. Lone Pine, a sepia etching with one tree carrying the whole scene, wants a wall where the tree can land where you choose. Moth Meadow goes in a study.

Picking between the designs

Pick the era the drawing borrows from. Toile, eighteenth century: Dune Scene, Harbour Sketch, Blue Shore, one colour on cream with a modern subject. Deco, 1920s: Bronze Shells, Shell Fans. Mid-century, 1950s: Teal Stars, Eames Parlour, Stepping Stones, Kiln Arch. Old textile: Moth Meadow, Woven Blocks, Toadstool Wood. Old print: Lone Pine, Rust Roses, Full Marigold, Amber Garland. The toiles and the etching use two colours, so paint is easy to match; the mid-century group brings four or five colours and sets the palette.

Related

The 1950s designs have their own page, mid-century wallpaper, and the 1960s and 1970s are in retro wallpaper; the toiles are also in coastal wallpaper. For when all this started, read When was wallpaper invented.