Color Decides Which Design a Pattern Turns Out to Be
In short: A pattern and a colorway are not the same decision, and the second one does more work than most specifications give it credit for. The identical drawing, printed on a different ground, can move from decorative to structural — a fact a museum curator can demonstrate on a single object. For a designer, this means the useful question is not only which pattern, but which version of it this particular room needs. Custom colorways and scale are available to the trade here for exactly that reason.
A curator's object lesson
Gregory Herringshaw, assistant curator for wallcoverings at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, once wrote about a mid-century paper called Citadel, an early wallpaper design by the textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen. The drawing is a lattice of circles and scrolls inside a grid, like ironwork. Larsen printed it in "a brilliant orange on an equally brilliant red ground," and, as Herringshaw notes, "the two colors merge together when viewed from a distance."
Then he makes the observation that is worth keeping. In that red-orange colorway, he writes, "the design takes on a more delicate, decorative function." But: "If the design was printed in black on a white ground it would carry more weight visually and create a stronger connection to citadel as a measure of defense."
Same drawing. Same repeat. Two different designs, one of which reads as ornament and one of which reads as architecture — and the only variable is color. A curator is not being poetic there; he is describing a mechanism.
Why this matters more than pattern selection does
Most specification conversations start and largely end with the pattern: is it botanical, is it geometric, is the repeat too obvious. All reasonable. But the pattern is the part that photographs, and the colorway is the part that lives in the room.
Two things follow. The first is that a ground color decides how far a pattern reads from. A close-toned colorway lets the drawing merge at distance and resolve only up close — the wall behaves as a texture across the room and reveals itself to whoever is standing at it. A high-contrast colorway does the opposite: it declares itself from the doorway and then has comparatively little left for the person sitting beside it. One of those is right for a corridor and the other is right for a dining room, and the pattern is identical in both cases.
The second is that color is the variable that actually has to answer the room. A pattern can be chosen from a photograph. A colorway cannot, because it has to survive the room's own light, the undertone of the millwork, the stone it sits beside and the hours of day the space is genuinely used in.
What designers are asking color to do right now
The prevailing direction supports this. Brittany Hakimfar of Far Studio describes the current movement toward "tonal spaces where walls, millwork and textiles sit within the same family of color to create depth and calm," rather than high-contrast color stories. That is a specification that a stock colorway will satisfy only by luck.
Sydney Katz of SDK Architecture names the quality that makes tonal schemes work — what she calls "chameleon colors that shift depending on what they're paired with," pointing to a neutral blue-green-gray that "can feel warm or cool depending on what it's paired with." A color like that is precisely the one you want to adjust by a few degrees rather than accept as printed.
And Abigail Kahan supplies the necessary caution against matching everything: "combinations that feel slightly discordant at first often bring the most vitality and sophistication to a space." Tuning a colorway is not about eliminating tension. It is about choosing where the tension goes.
Where this studio's colorways come from
Every pattern here begins as one of my own paintings — mark-making and passages lifted from finished work on canvas — so the palette in a pattern is a palette I mixed by hand before it was ever a file. That matters for adjustment: changing a colorway is not sampling a swatch off a chart, it is returning to the color logic the painting was built on and shifting it deliberately.
To be precise about what the product is, because the distinction is worth stating plainly: the pattern originates in a hand-painted original. The wallcovering itself is printed. It is 20 oz Type II commercial-grade vinyl with an embossed face and a slight strié shimmer over a laminated fabric backing — 24" wide, pre-trimmed and unpasted, 52" for commercial, sold by the yard with a 30-yard minimum and printed on demand in about two weeks. Samples are available, and the trade program carries 20% trade pricing, up to five free samples, and custom colorways and scale.
That last item is the point of the whole post. A designer working a tonal scheme, or a chameleon blue-green-gray, or a deliberate touch of discord, does not have to hope a stock ground happens to land. The version of the pattern that suits the room can be made.
How to decide, practically
Choose the pattern from the drawing. Choose the colorway from the room.
Then test the colorway the way you would test paint: get the sample on the actual wall, and look at it in the morning, at four in the afternoon, and under the lamps you will genuinely use. A ground color that looks resolved on a desk will often turn out to be doing something entirely different at seven in the evening with the curtains drawn. Luis Barragán, who understood color in rooms as well as anyone, set the target for what you are listening for: "I believe that a work of art reaches perfection when it conveys silent joy." And, more demandingly: "Serenity is the great and true antidote against anguish and fear, and today, more than ever, it is the architect's duty to make of it a permanent guest in the home, no matter how sumptuous or how humble."
A colorway is one of the quieter ways that duty gets discharged. It is also one of the few that can still be adjusted after the pattern has been chosen.
Frequently asked questions
What is a custom colorway in wallpaper?
A custom colorway is the same pattern printed in different colors from the stock version — usually adjusted to a room's light, millwork or stone. The drawing and repeat stay the same; the palette changes.
Does changing the colorway really change how a pattern reads?
Substantially. A close-toned colorway lets a pattern merge at distance and resolve up close, so the wall reads as texture from across the room. A high-contrast version declares itself from the doorway. The drawing is identical in both.
Can designers get custom colorways and scale on this wallpaper?
Yes. Custom colorways and custom scale are offered to the trade, alongside 20% trade pricing and up to five free samples.
Is this wallpaper hand-painted?
The pattern originates in a hand-painted original painting. The wallcovering itself is printed — 20 oz Type II vinyl with an embossed face and a slight strié shimmer over a laminated fabric backing.
See the work
Original abstract paintings and commissioned work are sold direct from the Nashville studio, to collectors and to the trade. See what is available now, or work with the studio on a commission.