There is no way around it, I simply love wallpaper. It’s just so easy to change the look of a room with it! I recently discovered that wallpaper dates back to the sixteenth century when it was printed in single, monochrome sheets that copied the motives of the era. Since that time it has evolved and become a useful tool for decorating, as it provides a simple and elegant way to give personality to our homes. Like mine!
Having experienced a downturn in the minimalistic decades that bridged the millennium, wallpaper is now fully back in fashion and has become a great alternative to painting. Just pop on your account on Etsy or Pinterest and you will find countless pages marveling about the latest model. In truth, this doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, as wallpaper offers great advantages when it comes to personalize our homes, with a variety of materials, motives, and colors that simply cannot be matched by painting.
In this article, I am going to share with you a few useful tips for decorating your home with wallpaper. Get a pen ready and start taking notes if you want to get the most out of it.
Wallpaper for decorating furniture
You might not be aware of it, but you can use wallpaper to give a completely new look to your tired, old furniture. If you are bored of the appearance of that old chest of drawers or you want to give a new look to those washed-out kitchen cabinets but are not willing to spend a fortune in a brand new kitchen? Wallpaper can be a great and economical solution to achieve this. Just think out of the box, picture the facing side of your dresser or the door of the kitchen cabinets as if they were a wall, choose the right motive and get the project started!
This approach has even a cool name, it’s called “furniture upcycling” and it is suitable both for wooden pieces of furniture as well as with plastic or glass ones. For best results, try to pick a non-woven wallpaper model, as it is the easiest to apply, but paper-based varieties work as well.
So, pick that cranky, old piece of furniture that bores you, then give it a new life by choosing a combination of colors, a geometric design, or a beautiful vintage pattern. Make sure however that the colors and patterns you pick for the wallpaper complement the rest of the furniture and the other decorative elements in the room, otherwise you might create a sense of disharmony that might look too clashing. This is especially true if you plan to cover large surface areas with patterned wallpaper.
Wallpaper for the children’s room
Wallpaper can look great in any room, but the very special place where you should consider one is the room of your baby. This is the place where your toddler spends most of his time and it is therefore especially important to foster his developing imagination. A bare wall, even if painted in a nice hue, can be boring. Spice it up by adding the canvas for incredible adventures. There are countless options for wallpapering the children’s room: animals, sports, plants, dinosaurs, characters from your kid’s favorite books or comics, superheroes… The possibilities are almost endless. You can choose to wallpaper the entire room if you want or opt for a feature wall, where your little one can gaze and dream his afternoons away. Most wallpapers designed for the children’s rooms nowadays are designed to be resistant and often washable or even scrubbable, meaning that even if those little hands decide to spread some jams or chocolate on the wall, those stains can be cleaned away with a soft brush or a wet cloth. If you want to take it a step further, you can do like I did for my twin girls’ room and pick a wallpaper where you can actually draw on with chalks or chalks markers. The Tinta Lousa Wallpaper, from the selection I suggested above, is, for example, one of those marvelous ones where your kids can let their inspiration go wild. There is nothing better than giving than letting a kid’s imagination be free to explore after all!
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