Sharri Hedeen had made up her mind: She would never use wallpaper. “In the ’60s and ’70s everybody had grasscloth if you were cool, or those fish tank scene murals,” he said. “It made such a mess when we were trying to take it off at my mother’s house. I promised myself I’d never use it in my own home.”
But then, she fell in love and changed her mind.
“It’s different and so beautiful!” Hedeen said of the handmade greenish-brown “Cigar” paper that now graces the 15-foot ceiling in her master bathroom. “It looks like squares of marble, and it’s definitely not your grandmother’s wallpaper!”
Hedeen isn’t the only one doing an about-face. After decades of white walls and faux finishes, wallpaper is making a comeback.
“We were up 15 percent in wallpaper last month,” said Brian Mathot, who manages the Sherwin-Williams store in Kettering, Ohio, and is convinced television makeover shows have triggered the trend.
“Even though you rarely see a home improvement show doing wallpaper, the shows are encouraging people to be more creative and daring,” he said.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal notes the wallcovering industry is trying to reverse six straight years of declining sales. It was down 23 percent to $1 billion in the past two years alone, according to the Paint and Decorating Retailers Association.
But the new textured wallpapers, now sold by home improvement chains like Lowe’s and Home Depot as well as through upscale interior-design shops, may be saving the day. Their artsy appeal seems to be attracting those in their 30s and older.
The most coveted papers are those custom wall coverings that incorporate unusual materials such as glass beads, ribbons or sand. A wallpaper from New York’s Carnegie Fabrics is called “Loofah” and looks like a bath sponge. Another looks like faux snakeskin.
There are papers of cork and bark, some that mimic the handpainted sponged look.
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Elizabeth Dow of New York creates collages from real plant materials such as feathers and flowers.
She and her artisans make papers from Indonesian woven raffia and Nepalese ferns; her newest product is made from 100 percent Belgian linen that looks like canvas and comes in 18 color waves, including bright tangerine orange and Sienna earth tones.
Her wallpapers range from $32 to $85 per yard.
“Everything is handmade, we dye papers, do custom glazing,” said Dow, whose says business is up 110 percent year-to-date.
Dow travels the world to check out what’s happening in retail store design.
“You get cues from fashion,” she said, adding that home decorating magazines have been “incredible” in terms of educating the public and pushing the level of aesthetics up several notches. “The most important part is that you’re seeing what potential a room can have, and you’re also understanding more clearly what makes up good design. The result is a new appreciation for our homes. People are looking for beautiful textures they can live with.”
Dow can turn almost anything into wallpaper.
“We have one wall covering that we used a cancelled check from Elvis Presley,” she says. “We’ve worked with people’s personal scrapbooks, used real newspapers and Broadway Playbills.”
What’s most exciting, she said, is seeing younger people appreciate wall coverings.
Dow believes their love of natural papers is a reaction to technology. “Nothing can compare to a handmade product,” she said. “Something made by hand stands heads above a machine-made product.”
What goes around, comes around. When wallpapers first came into mainstream in the mid-18th Century, said Gregory Herringshaw, they were all done by hand. Herringshaw is assistant curator of wall coverings for the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, which has the largest collection of wallpaper in the nation–10,000 samples in books, rolls and fragments. The earliest wallpaper goes back to 1509, he said, and was found in England.
He believes people are tired of neutral interiors; wallpaper can dramatically change the look of a room. “I had students here yesterday and I showed them one wallpaper design printed in five different color ways,” he said. “Each one looks totally different, it’s amazing how much a color can change the look of a design.”
Wallpaper, he said, reflects current trends as well as the owner’s personality. Of course, the economy is always a factor.
“If times are bad and you’re not going to have another paycheck, you’re not going to be spending a lot of money on wallpapers,” said Herringshaw, adding that custom wallpaper can run up to $150 a yard. But top interior designers are beginning to opt for papers again. And most of the new companies entering the market are going into the high end, using their designer or fine arts backgrounds to create interesting specialty papers.
“Tracy Kendall in London cuts out squares of paper by hand, sews them on a background, sews on sequins to make a three-dimensional wallpaper,” he said. “It’s very time-consuming and labor intensive.”
Sharri Hedeen watched in fascination as her friend Catherine Campbell began applying the textured handmade “Cigar” paper to her walls. “It was like she was putting up a puzzle,” she said.
Campbell, a faux finisher for 10 years, discovered the new handmade paper at a Detroit stenciling trade show and is now serving as distributor for Vahallan Papers. The custom wall coverings run about $6 per square foot, including labor.
“It’s very elegant and you just can’t get the look anywhere else,” she said.