Bring the outside in: easy-hang botanical wallpapers proving popular with DIYers in lockdown

If lockdown has left you longing for the outdoors, the latest easy-hang wallpapers with lush leaves, fruit, flowers and wildlife bring summer into your home. Follow Barbara Chandler on Instagram @sunnygran

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Barbara Chandler18 May 2020

Locked-down Londoners are bringing the outside in with new easy-hang wallpapers featuring flowers, trees, leaves and more motifs from nature.

As with paint, suppliers report a surge in demand for easy-hang papers.

You simply paste the wall itself after measuring and cutting your strips of paper, or “drops”. Then place your paper on the wall and give it a final trim to fit.

Bring a whole new look to a corridor, a bathroom, the downstairs loo or kitchen — or make a statement on a living room wall.

“Nature is a big trend,” says Melanie Adams, creative director at Brewers, the old-established decorating merchant, which pioneered the online sale of wallpaper and paint with its websites designerpaint.com and wallpaperdirect.com.

The latter now carries 126 brands and up to 18,000 wallpapers from top designer names — plus a video on how to hang papers.

Adds Mel: “People want to escape into the garden with florals, especially if they live in cities.”

One roll of standard-width 52cm paper will cover around two metres of wall, but some rolls are now 70cm wide to cover more.

Brewers also sells the tools you’ll need: a roller to apply direct from a tub of good-quality paste, a paperhangers brush for smoothing out, plus a good cellulose decorators sponge to take away drips with water before they dry.

Tropical Leaf wallpaper by Mind The Gap, £175 for a set of three rolls to cover about 4.65sq m (mindtheg.com)

Don’t be afraid to hang paper yourself, says marketing director Ruth Mottershead at Little Greene, a family-run firm producing paints and papers in the UK. “Paste-the-wall paper is very hard to rip.”

From tropical palms to ferns and forests, leafy patterns are very restful.

Find elegant bamboos, birds, butterflies and flowers in the newly launched National Trust Papers, where the Belton Scenic pattern is based on a “Chinese” bedroom at Belton House in Lincolnshire.

Price is £209 a roll, which will cut into three panels to cover roughly 1.56 metres of wall (delivery in five to seven days, £3.95). A “decorators kit” with basic tools costs £28.

You can find more leafy papers priced from around £20 a roll at ilovewallpaper.co.uk, and from £40 to £60 a roll at Graham & Brown, whose downloadable virtual reality phone app visualises the designs. Both these brands can deliver.

Magnolia & Woodchip is a small UK family company, headed by designer Nina Marika Tarnowski and her husband, Paul.

Nina is a “self-confessed pattern addict”. Their printing workshop specialises in mural effects.

For example, Abundance is based on a classic Dutch flower painting of the 17th century. It’s sold as numbered lengths, each 52cm wide. Price is from £245, adapted to fit your home and delivered free.

Find iconic flower patterns, too, in the Vintage collection by Sanderson (“inspired by nature since 1860”) from £53 a roll at stylelibrary.com.

The Glasshouse collection by Sanderson features exquisitely detailed botanical drawings, also at Style Library.

Terrariums by Sanderson, £79 per roll (stylelibrary.com)

Trees can make a leafy bower. The Woods design by Cole & Son dates back to the Fifties but is bang on trend.

Originally created in collaboration with the Royal College of Art, it has never been out of print, the epitome of timeless design.

The distinctive bark of birch trees creates a striped effect to make a space seem taller. Price is £68 for a 10-metre roll from John Lewis, with free delivery, usually within a week.

Find more top brands with home delivery at prices from £23.90 a roll at Jane Clayton & Co.

For fashion designer Matthew Williamson, butterflies are a favourite motif. Especially charming is the Meadow mural, by leading wallpaper brand Osborne & Little.

It comes as a single roll that you cut into three panels, each three metres long — trim these to your wall height — and 70cm wide.

Thus, the resulting pattern will cover 2.1 metres, but you can adapt it to suit your room.

Price is £198 plus free delivery from TM Interiors, who can deliver within two to three days.

This well-established family firm has wallpapers from all leading brands, at prices from around £35 a roll, plus paints from Little Greene, Designers Guild, Sanderson and Zoffany.

Finally, fruit makes for delicious motifs.

For example, Bumble, a charming melange of strawberries and bees, is from a new collection by artist Isabelle Boxell exclusively for Wallpaper Direct, priced £89 for a wide-width 69cm roll with delivery in five to seven days.