What we'd tell you about your walls.
Wallpaper isn't the finishing touch on a room. It's the first decision, and everything else in the room answers to it.
Here's how we think about it, from choosing the pattern to deciding which walls get it.
Ask the right question.
Most people standing in front of a sample ask "is this too much." That's the wrong question, and it usually comes from an imaginary guest who might raise an eyebrow.
The right question is "is this me." That guest doesn't live in your house.
Get the scale right.
Scale shapes how a room feels more than color or pattern does. Our patterns come in three scales, oversized, classic, and petite, and each one behaves differently once it multiplies across four walls.
An oversized repeat reads as a statement from the doorway and a painting up close. A petite print can make a small room feel busy just as easily as a big one can make it feel crowded, so choose for the room, not for how it looked on your laptop.
Skip the accent wall.
One papered wall in a painted room tends to look like a decision that lost its nerve. If a pattern is worth hanging, it's worth hanging all the way around.
A small room is the easiest place to start. A powder room, a stair landing, or a hallway is contained enough to commit to fully, and none of them had much of a point of view before.
Look up.
The ceiling is the most overlooked surface in the house. Papering it, with or without the walls, makes a room feel finished in a way paint never quite does.
Don't let the light decide for you.
A north-facing room doesn't have to be white. Cool, indirect light can carry a warm, saturated pattern beautifully, and often needs it more than a sunny room does.
The same goes for dark colors in small rooms. A dense, dark pattern at a generous scale can make a small room feel deliberate rather than cramped.
Let one thing be loud.
Coordination isn't matching. Rooms where everything matches tend to feel like hotel lobbies.
Let the pattern be the loudest thing in the room, and let everything else do less work on purpose.
Decide with the real thing.
A screen can't tell you how a color will sit with you at seven in the morning, or how a repeat reads at full height. Order samples of up to three patterns you're seriously considering, and hold them where the paper will actually hang.
Look at them in the morning and again at night, from across the room and up close. If you still love one after a week, you have your answer.