Traditional Prints Are Hot, But There’s Also a Demand for the Daring

Byron McElderry, design coordinator at Shinn’s Paint & Wallcovering, acknowledges choosing just one wallpaper pattern can be painstaking, especially now with so many more options available. Those styles, McElderry says, and easier application and removal are making wallpapers more fashionable. Wallcovering sales reached $601 million in 2009, according to the Paint and Decorating Retailers Association, and are expected to increase 2.8 percent a year through 2012. “I’m seeing a lot of specialty, fun, funky and unusual papers that really make a statement,” says Mary Cairns of Mary Cairns Interiors. “Ten years ago, people were using more traditional stuff, but I’ve worked with materials like cork, leather, and grasscloth with twigs and sticks in it.” Wallpapers designers are becoming more bold with their colors, and homeowners are no longer scared to use colors and patterns, McElderry says. And while stores definitely carry papers he calls “shocking” or “daring,” he says that many traditional patterns are popular right now, such as damask, stripes, and Jacobean. | Read More