Back and better than ever: Modern eco-friendly wallpaper

Some design ideas and trends that have made a comeback leave you slightly wondering who might be buying into these things, such as avocado bathroom suites, which were hastily ripped out of bathrooms but appear to have somewhat inexplicably to many, made a bit of a comeback.

One recent home décor recent trend that is very easy to understand and is growing traction with every week that passes, is the return of wallpaper, and not only is it back in a big way, it is also better than ever before.

Why wallpaper works

It should be remembered first and foremost that it is not a prerequisite to live in an older house in order for wallpapers to work and provide a stylish finish to a room.

To use wallpapers to their very best effect and for the look to really work successfully, you should aim to choose a design that is appropriate for the scale of your home. A good example of what we mean by this is to use the small floral designs that were typically featured in a standard 1930’s home, in a high-ceilinged room and conversely, another design faux-pas would be to try and use heavily patterned Victorian print wallpaper in a relatively small space or low-ceilinged space, causing the pattern to simply overwhelm the feel of the room.

Design tips

The basic principles involved in helping a wall covering to become the focus of the room is to pick out the key colors from the design that you have chosen and then repeat them in plain fabrics and even painted woodwork around the room, to draw it all together.

If you want to try and mix in other prints without pushing the wallpaper to the background completely then you would probably be advised to stick to a more limited color palette, or you could opt for another print drawn from the same collection so that they are grouped and help you to co-ordinate with relatively minimal effort.

If your goal is to try and achieve a more eclectic look then you could try a design trick that is often a winning combination, of teaming an archive wallpaper with modern furniture. If you take this route then it works well if you remember to echo the design, such as using a pattern that has subtle curves together with furniture that has curved contours as well.

If you are keen to find a paint that successfully matches the tones that are generally used in archive wallpaper, take a look at period and heritage paint collections for best results.

Wallpaper trends

There are a number of trends becoming firmly established when it comes to design ideas using wallpaper and here are some of the designs and ideas that are firmly on-trend at the present time.

Retro-revival

Another new year and another opportunity to herald the return of retro-revival wallpaper yet again. It seems that there is a retro-revival pretty much every year. This year’s focus is mainly on 1950’s and 1960’s minimalism. The geometrics of this look are slightly un-balanced and that is the whole point, as it is supposed to look great when a whole bunch of contrasting prints are almost cobbled together. To pull this look off you will need to get geometric cushions and curtains plus other fabrics that do the job of providing a brilliant contrast.

Lovely flowers

It seems slightly strange to suggest flowery wallpaper is trending as flowers never really go out of fashion completely when it comes to design. This year the emphasis is on graphic, boldly colored designs or large designs that can be part of a textured pattern or maybe even flocked.

Photorealism

The choice is endless with Disney-themed images that can be ordered through specialist companies like wallpaperink to brighten up a child’s bedroom with their favorite characters to abstract and street art or a large print of one of your favorite pictures.

All of these trends mentioned are either back in fashion once again or are new ideas that are firmly taking hold, but they all share one thing in common. They are more than likely to be eco-friendly versions of wallpaper compared to their predecessors and will look great in your home.