How Should the Room Feel — The Question a Wallcovering Answers Before Any Other

In short. The most serious wallcovering houses begin a commission by asking how the room should feel, not how it should look — and that ordering is not a flourish, it is the working method. Pattern sets the emotional register of a space faster than furniture, paint or art, because it covers the largest continuous surface a person sees. Specifying for atmosphere means deciding the feeling first, then choosing scale, value and texture to produce it, and treating colourway as the last decision rather than the first. Memory is part of the mechanism: people recall rooms through their walls.

Last updated: September 24, 2026

What do the best wallcovering houses ask first?

How the room should feel. Before use, before look, before budget.

At Fromental — the London house known for hand-painted and embroidered silk wallcoverings — the first question put to a new client reliably raises an eyebrow, because it is not the one people have prepared for. Not how do you want it to look. Not how will you use the space. Those come later.

Co-founder Lizzie Deshayes describes how she gets a client to that answer, and the method is worth stealing: "I would ask you to close your eyes, cast your mind back to your childhood and see the wallpaper in your parents' or grandparents' house. How does that make you feel? And all of a sudden you are there, you can smell the room. It's really incredible."

That exercise works on almost everyone, and it is evidence for a claim that otherwise sounds like marketing: people store rooms in memory through their walls. Not the sofa. Not the light fitting. The pattern, its scale, and the light it held.

Why does a wall carry more emotional weight than the furniture in front of it?

Because it is the largest continuous thing in the room, and it is behind everything else.

Furniture is read as objects — discrete, countable, replaceable. A patterned wall is read as condition. It sets the temperature of the light, the apparent size of the room and the register of everything placed against it before a person has consciously looked at anything. It is closer to weather than to decoration.

Scale is where this becomes concrete. A large repeat in a small room does not shrink the room; it makes the room feel deliberate, because the pattern is clearly not trying to hide. A small tight repeat across a large wall reads as texture from any normal distance and behaves like a warm plaster or a grasscloth rather than a print. The same pattern at two scales produces two completely different rooms, which is why scale variants are worth treating as separate products rather than sizes.

Value does the rest. A low-contrast pattern — where the figure and the ground sit close in tone — envelops. A high-contrast one punctuates. Neither is more sophisticated than the other; they simply do opposite jobs, and choosing the wrong one is the most common reason a beautiful paper feels wrong once it is up.

How do curators talk about this?

As a matter of what colour is doing, not what the motif depicts.

Gregory Herringshaw, Assistant Curator for Wallcoverings at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, makes the point about a mid-century design whose two colours were chosen at nearly identical intensity: "the two colors merge together when viewed from a distance." Sit close and the pattern is legible as pattern; stand back and it resolves into a single atmospheric field. That is a specification decision with two entirely different outcomes built into one paper, and nothing about the drawing changes between them.

Herringshaw also notes what happens at the other setting: at a different contrast, "the design takes on a more delicate, decorative function." Same motif. Different job in the room.

What does specifying for atmosphere look like in practice?

Four decisions, in this order.

Decide the feeling, in a word. Enveloped. Alert. Cool. Held. If the word does not come, describe a room you remember rather than a room you have seen photographed.

Choose value before hue. Ask whether the figure should disappear into the ground at six feet or hold its own. That single decision determines more of the finished feeling than the colourway will.

Choose scale against the wall, not against the sample. A pattern judged flat on a table at arm's length is a pattern judged at the wrong distance. Hold a sample where it will hang and walk to the far side of the room.

Choose the colourway last. It is the decision everyone wants to make first and the one that matters least to atmosphere.

Where this studio's wallcoverings sit

Every pattern in the line begins as one of my paintings.

The mark-making, the layering, the places where a colour was worked back and something underneath was allowed to stay — all of that originates in an original hand-painted work, and the pattern is drawn from it. The paper itself is printed by a manufacturer onto 20 oz Type II commercial-grade vinyl: an embossed face with a slight strié-shimmer over a laminated fabric backing, 24 inches wide, pre-trimmed and unpasted, with a 52-inch width for commercial work. Print-on-demand runs about two weeks.

What that substrate gives you, in the atmosphere terms above, is a surface with a real physical response to light — the shimmer shifts across a wall as the light moves through a day, which a flat paper cannot do.

Among the patterns currently live: Atelier Berry Silvered Champagne and Atelier Blue Haze sit at the low-contrast, enveloping end. Flourish Greige and Flourish Warm White with Tan Liquid Silk are the quietest things in the line, reading as texture from across a room. Chic Stripe Winter Grey Sage and Toile Medium Sky Blue hold more figure and suit a room that wants to be alert rather than settled. Deco Black and Cigar is the one that punctuates. Custom colourways and scales are available to the trade, along with the 20% trade discount and up to five free samples — see the full wallpaper line or the trade programme.

The older argument underneath

Wallcoverings were never primarily decorative, and the houses doing the best work now are recovering that rather than inventing it. Deshayes describes the painters at Fromental's studio as working from essence rather than likeness: "They don't paint the flower, they paint the essence of the flower. It's not a copy, it is a flower but it's a stylisation of everything within that. You feel the bud opening. You get that same joy that you get in nature. It doesn't capture it, it expresses it."

Expresses rather than captures. That is the whole difference between a wall that depicts something and a wall that does something to the person standing in front of it — and it is why the first question is, and should be, how the room ought to feel.

FAQ

How do I choose wallpaper for the atmosphere of a room rather than the look?

Decide the feeling in a single word first, then choose value before hue — whether the pattern should disappear into its ground at six feet or hold its own. Choose scale by holding a sample where it will actually hang and walking to the far side of the room. Choose the colourway last. Most people reverse this order and then cannot work out why a beautiful paper feels wrong.

Does pattern scale change how big a room feels?

Yes, but not the way people expect. A large repeat in a small room tends to make the room feel deliberate rather than smaller, because the pattern is clearly not trying to hide. A small tight repeat across a large wall reads as texture from normal viewing distance and behaves more like a plaster or a grasscloth than a print. The same design at two scales produces two different rooms.

What makes artist-designed wallpaper different from a pattern-studio design?

The pattern originates in an original hand-painted work rather than being drawn to a brief, so the layering, mark-making and colour relationships carry over from a painting. The wallcovering itself is printed by a manufacturer onto vinyl — the painting is the hand-made part, the paper is the printed part.

Is vinyl wallcovering suitable for a high-traffic or commercial interior?

20 oz Type II commercial-grade vinyl is specified for exactly those conditions, which is why it is standard in hospitality. It is sold 24 inches wide, pre-trimmed and unpasted, with a 52-inch width available for commercial projects, and it carries an embossed face with a slight strié-shimmer over a laminated fabric backing.