Floral Wallpaper
Floral wallpaper is the largest single style at Wallpaper Trader: 129 designs, from Sandberg's hand-drawn Swedish meadows and Långelid/von Brömssen's storybook blooms to Casamance and Romo florals with a French and English pedigree. Seventy-four are sold by the roll from $212, and the rest are made-to-measure designs priced by the square metre from $81. Every design is available as a $10 A4 sample, with $5 postage within Australia.
Buying guide and questions we are asked
How to choose a floral wallpaper
Scale decides everything. A small, dense floral reads as texture from across the room and suits bedrooms, hallways and rooms with a lot of furniture. A large, open floral with a pale ground needs a wall it can breathe on: behind a bed, in a dining room, along a stair. Look at the pattern repeat on the product page. A repeat under 30 cm gives an all-over effect; a repeat of 60 cm or more gives a design you can actually read from the sofa.
Then think about the ground. Cream and stone grounds are the easy ones and go with most paint. Dark grounds, navy, charcoal or black, turn a floral into a night garden and work well in powder rooms and studies. If the room already has patterned fabric, keep the wallpaper to two or three colours and let the fabric carry the rest.
What we stock and how it is sold
Sandberg makes up more than half the collection, and every Sandberg design begins as a drawing made by hand, which is why the meadows look painted rather than photographed. Sandberg rolls are 53 cm wide and 10.05 m long, non-woven and hung paste-the-wall. Långelid/von Brömssen florals are printed in Ulricehamn, the Swedish town where Sandberg began. Casamance and Romo bring the wider, more textured florals, and the Rebel Walls and Sandberg murals are printed to your wall size. Roll width, length, pattern repeat and match are listed under Product Details on every product, and rolls are printed to order, so allow three to four weeks for delivery.
The designs Australians order most
Over the last twelve months the floral ordered most often was Lo by Sandberg, followed by two more Sandberg designs, Emma, a meadow of lupins and poppies, and Sandra, a made-to-measure floral. The designs people sample most are the bolder Casamance florals, Tehuana, Dauphine, Talavera and Mandorla, which is what we would expect: the more colour a design carries, the more a sample earns its keep.
Before you order
Measure the wall and run it through the roll calculator, which allows for the pattern repeat, and read how many rolls do I need if the wall has doors or windows. Order the sample, tape it up, and look at it in morning and evening light before you commit. Florals for a baby's room are gathered in nursery wallpaper; for greenery without flowers see botanical and forest and woodland; for a colour-led search try pink wallpaper or green wallpaper.
Questions we are asked about floral wallpaper
Is floral wallpaper still in style?
Yes, and it never really left; what changes is scale and colour. The florals Australians order from this collection lean towards hand-drawn Scandinavian designs with space between the flowers rather than dense chintz.
Which room suits a floral?
Bedrooms first, because a floral softens a room and reads well from the pillow. Dining rooms and powder rooms take the boldest designs. In kitchens and bathrooms choose a non-woven paper and read our guide to wallpaper in bathrooms and kitchens first.
How many rolls will I need?
Measure width and height in metres, note the pattern repeat from the product page, and use the roll calculator. Always round up to the next full roll and buy every roll for a wall at the same time, so they come from the same print batch.
Can I get a sample first?
Yes. A4 samples are A$10 each plus A$5 postage within Australia, A$18 to New Zealand and A$35 elsewhere, sent by letter mail and usually with you within a week.