Feature Wallpaper Ideas & Inspiration
Thinking of creating a statement feature wall in your home? One that commands attention and makes you stop and stare every time you walk past?
A single papered wall is one of the easiest ways to bring pattern, colour, and personality into your room. You don’t have to commit to papering every wall – just choose one or two spaces where your favourite design can take centre stage.
Discover our top feature wallpaper ideas to inspire your next project.
Getting your feature wallpaper right
There’s more to a patterned wallpaper accent wall than just choosing the biggest, boldest design you can find. Here’s what you need to consider:
- Choose the right wall. Pick a wall that already draws the eye, rather than one that competes with your windows or furniture. Behind a bed or around a fireplace are the perfect spots for feature wallpaper.
- Get the scale right. Make sure you choose the right scale pattern to suit your room size. Bold, large-scale patterns are ideal for larger rooms, whereas smaller spaces call for something subtler.
- Keep your other walls plain. A patterned wallpaper accent wall works best when you keep the rest of your walls plain. This calmer backdrop will make the feature wallpaper really pop.
- Stick to a tight colour palette. Pull one or two colours out from your wallpaper and echo them in your soft furnishings or decor. This will ensure that the pattern feels confident rather than chaotic.
Need more inspiration? Read our five top tips for using patterned wallpaper in your home.
Find the perfect feature wallpaper for your space
Up the Garden Path
Up the Garden Path in Teal is one of our bestselling feature wallpapers. The flowing, gently moving pattern helps to evoke a feeling of tranquility, and is suitable for most spaces. Here, we’ve paired it with fabrics and artwork in warming peach, soft ochre, and terracotta tones, keeping the colour palette tight so that the wallpaper really sings. You could then finish the look with made to measure curtains in a plain terracotta or peach linen union, so that the window dressing echoes the wall rather than competing with it.
Also available in: Charcoal.
Works best in: Living rooms, but can be used across the home.
Cow Parsley
Want to add a touch of nature to your walls? Our Cow Parsley wallpaper in Duck Egg and Cornflower depicts the delicate flora and fauna found in the English countryside, bringing a sense of calm and serenity to any room. We’ve paired it with a tonal palette of duck egg and cornflower fabrics, including Life & Eternity, to create a scheme that feels fresh and harmonious. The artwork introduces touches of pink and citrus for playful contrast, with a single cushion in a vibrant kale tying the scheme together.
Works best in: Studies, hallways, and other smaller rooms.
Song Birds
Song Birds in Buttercup, Clay & Charcoal is an elegant flowing, organic pattern that brightens up any space. The colour is soft and the pattern is calming, almost becoming a texture when you look at it from a distance. It’s ideal for bedrooms, especially behind a headboard where you want a gentle backdrop rather than a bold one. We’ve styled it with fabrics in soft yellows and greys, mixing stripes and circles that pick up the tones in the paper. The art is similar in colour but contrasts in style to add a layer of subtle tension and interest.
Works best in: Bedrooms, especially behind headboards.
Spotty Stripe
Our Spotty Stripe wallpaper in Duck Egg is a subtle, versatile design that works beautifully in any room. It adds texture and interest to walls without overwhelming the space, making it the perfect backdrop for your favourite artwork. In this scene, it becomes a simple backdrop to a nature-inspired bedroom scheme in calming tonal shades of blue and moss green. The bedside table features scented roses for a good night’s sleep – they’re actually the same roses that climb the front of our shop and fill the summer air with gentle fragrance.
Also available in: Smoke and Limestone.
Works best in: Bedrooms and hallways as a backdrop for photographs.
Freshen up your walls with Vanessa Arbuthnott Fabrics
At Vanessa Arbuthnott Fabrics, we offer a fantastic range of designer wallpapers and washable wall coverings that add a layer of personality to your walls. They look great in both contemporary and traditional interiors, and are extremely easy to clean and maintain. All the inks in our wallpapers are water-based, which means they’re non-toxic and very low in volatile organic compounds – making them better for both your health and the planet.
Not sure which wallpaper is right for your room? Browse our complete collection of wallpaper designs and order up to five free samples to see how the pattern sits in your space. Happy wallpapering!
FAQs
What is a feature wall?
A feature wall is one wall in a room that is decorated differently from the others to create a focal point. This can be achieved with wallpaper or panelling, for example. It’s typically the wall behind a bed, sofa, or fireplace, where you want to introduce a bolder pattern or colour without decorating the entire room.
Which wallpaper patterns work best for a feature wall?
Tonal, nature-inspired patterns that read well from a distance work best for feature walls, such as Cow Parsley or Song Birds. Subtle designs like Spotty Stripe suit smaller rooms or hallways, adding texture without overwhelming the space.
Should wallpaper match your curtains?
No, your wallpaper and curtains don’t need to match exactly. Choose one or two colours from the wallpaper and showcase these in your curtain fabric, following a 70:20:10 colour ratio. Or, you could contrast a patterned wall with plain linen union curtains for balance.
How do I choose a wallpaper colour for a small room?
When choosing a wallpaper colour for a small room, opt for soft, tonal colours such as duck egg or buttercup. Make sure you keep the pattern scale small so it doesn’t close the room in. Papering a single feature wall, rather than all four, also helps a small room keep its sense of space.
We sell fabrics exclusively designed by Vanessa Arbuthnott, along side small, bespoke collection of Made to Measure items which includes curtains, blinds, sofas, footstools, chairs, headboards, and quilts, all handmade specially for you by master crafts people.
