The Australian Wallpaper Report 2026

Published by Wallpaper Trader — Australia's annual study of what the nation is putting on its walls.

Wallpaper is back in Australia, though not the wallpaper you remember. After a decade of grey paint and bare plasterboard, Australians are searching for pattern, texture and full-wall murals in numbers that have surprised even the industry. This report draws on twelve months of Australian search data, social platform analysis and community forum research to map where the demand is going, and what's quietly disappearing.

Headline findings

Searches for “art deco wallpaper” are Australia's fastest-rising wallpaper query, registering Breakout growth (Google's term for a rise above 5,000%) from a near-zero base over the past 12 months. See the Google Trends data.
Peel-and-stick wallpaper searches have grown roughly six-fold in Australia in five years, and rose a further ~25% between late 2025 and the first half of 2026. “Renter friendly wallpaper” is up 140% year on year (Google Trends).
The heritage revival is measurable, not anecdotal. Australian searches for “Morris and Co wallpaper” hit Breakout status this year, with Graham & Brown up 400%, Laura Ashley up 190% and Arte up 150% (Google Trends).
Texture is the new neutral. Houzz's 2026 Emerging Summer Trends Report puts linen wallpaper up 104%, seagrass up 94% and Venetian plaster up 94%, while Australian searches for grasscloth and seagrass wallpaper rose 130%. Etsy named Washed Linen its first-ever Texture of the Year.
The renter decorating economy has gone mainstream. On TikTok, #renterfriendly content has amassed 2.9 billion views, #accentwall 2.0 billion and #peelandstick 1.0 billion, and a single kids' mural room makeover drew 20.5 million plays.
Wallpaper has a season in Australia. Every major wallpaper search term spiked in the second week of February 2026, with “wall mural” searches running at five times their usual level, while December remains the year's quietest month (Google Trends).

What Australians are searching for

The clearest pattern in a year of Australian search data is local intent. “Australia” is the dominant word shoppers attach to wallpaper queries. It's the first or second autocomplete suggestion for peel-and-stick, removable, floral, nursery, bathroom, vintage and grasscloth wallpaper alike, alongside “buy wallpaper online australia” and “wallpaper samples australia free”. Australians want to know their wallpaper is stocked here, ships from here, and can be sampled before they commit.

The second pattern is that Australians shop by room and by colour, not just by style. Bathroom and kitchen wallpaper queries come with “waterproof” attached, and “peel and stick wallpaper for bathroom” jumped 350% in a year. Colour-led searches (white, green, blue, black and pink wallpaper) all rank among the country's top related queries, and “wallpaper near me” doubled, pointing to renewed appetite for seeing paper in person.

Then there is the term Australia made its own: the feature wall. It out-searches “peel and stick wallpaper” roughly four to one here, an Australian-English idiom with no equal overseas weighting. The irony of 2026, covered below, is that the feature wall is peaking as a search term just as the single feature wall itself starts to look old-fashioned.

One more telling signal: searches for “how to remove wallpaper glue” and “how to get wallpaper off walls” both hit Breakout growth this year. Australians aren't just buying wallpaper. They're stripping the old stuff off first. A redecoration cycle is underway.

The rising styles

1. Murals and panoramic walls

The strongest converging signal across every channel studied. In Australia, “wall mural” now runs at roughly 83% of the search volume of peel-and-stick wallpaper, and spiked to five times its normal level in February 2026. On Instagram, #wallmural carries 595,000 posts, and recent content under #muralwallpaper is dominated by before-and-after transformations: kids' bedroom murals, chinoiserie-style botanical panels and oversized blooms. On TikTok, the single biggest organic wallpaper video in our sample, a child's under-the-sea mural makeover, has 20.5 million plays. Panoramic murals have arrived in residential interiors this year, with coastal horizons, misty forests and chinoiserie gardens leading, in palettes of eucalyptus grey, ochre and dusty olive.

The mural is 2026's feature wall, bought by the wall rather than by the roll.

2. Heritage, vintage and the Neo Deco breakout

If 2026 has a defining statistic, it is this: “art deco wallpaper” grew more than 5,000% in Australian search in a single year. It is not alone. “Morris and Co wallpaper” hit Breakout status, “vintage wallpaper” rebounded to an index of 20 in early 2026 after sitting at 2–3 through 2024–25, and heritage British names (Graham & Brown up 400%, Laura Ashley up 190%, Arte up 150%) fill the rising-query list.

The social platforms called it first. Pinterest's 2026 forecast named Neo Deco, described as “crisp chevrons, fan arches and other geometric hits, edged in chrome or brass”, building on 2025's vintage maximalism trend.

There's an architectural logic to the Australian version of this revival. Heritage patterns suit Federation homes, Queenslanders and Californian bungalows in a way they rarely suit a newer build, since these houses' picture rails and proportions were built to frame pattern in the first place. For these homes, heritage prints read as authenticity rather than nostalgia.

Arts and Crafts florals, Art Deco fans and Victorian damasks, recoloured in sage, terracotta and burgundy, are 2026's fastest-growing wallpaper styles in Australia.

3. Texture-look plains: linen, limewash and grasscloth

The quiet giant of 2026. Flat, single-colour walls increasingly read as unfinished this year, and the numbers behind that shift are striking. Houzz recorded linen wallpaper up 104%, seagrass up 94% and Venetian plaster up 94%, while Australian searches for grasscloth and seagrass wallpaper climbed 130%. Etsy crowned Washed Linen its first-ever Texture of the Year and named Patina Blue its 2026 Colour of the Year.

The palette is shifting with the texture: Houzz tracked rust up 178%, chocolate brown up 153%, mushroom up 69%, sage up 55% and taupe up 50%, warm and earthy tones that handle harsh Australian sunlight better than pale greys ever did. On Instagram, #texturedwalls holds 60,700 posts, and a single Venetian-plaster feature wall on TikTok pulled 10.5 million plays.

In 2026, texture is doing the job colour did in 2016.

4. Renter-friendly and peel-and-stick

Australia's growth format. Peel-and-stick search volume has risen roughly six-fold in five years and is still climbing, while the older term “removable wallpaper” has collapsed as a search phrase, meaning shoppers have switched vocabulary entirely. “Renter friendly wallpaper” rose 140%, and autocomplete fills with “wallpaper for rentals” and “removable wallpaper for renters”.

The cultural engine is TikTok, where #renterfriendly content has accumulated 2.9 billion views and the median video in our sample drew 12.8 million plays. The viral formula is consistent: before-and-after rental transformations, wood-slat looks, peel-and-stick bathrooms, and in the comments, two questions on repeat: will it fall off? and will I get my bond back? Community forums echo the same anxiety, with renters describing a wish for wallpaper that is genuinely removable, bond protection being the make-or-break concern. The brands that win this market in 2026 will be the ones that prove removal, not just promise it.

Kids' rooms are the crossover category: #kidsroomdecor carries 2.14 million Instagram posts, “childrens wallpaper” hit Breakout growth in Australian search, and Pinterest has “circus nursery” up 50%. The most-liked comment on that 20.5-million-play kids' mural video, “to be 7 picking a wild crazy theme… to be 16 hating it”, with 195,000 likes, is precisely why removable formats now dominate the category.

What's fading

Grey, greige and the all-neutral scheme. Warm earth tones and dusty mineral blues are taking over from cool greys.
The single, lonely feature wall. 2026 is shaping up as the year the feature wall dissolves into colour drenching, wallpapered ceilings and four-wall commitment.
2018-era pastel palm and flamingo prints. Superseded by moodier, painterly botanicals: oversized leaves in deep greens and terracottas rather than flat tropical pastels.
Flat, untextured walls. They increasingly read as unfinished rather than clean.
Both extremes of minimalism and maximalism. The middle ground, confident pattern rather than chaos, is where 2026 has landed.

The wallpaper calendar

Australian wallpaper demand is strongly seasonal. Every major wallpaper search term spiked in the week of 8–15 February 2026: peel-and-stick hit its annual peak and wall-mural searches ran at five times their normal level. The late-January-to-April window is consistently the nation's redecorating high season, as post-holiday renovation plans turn into action, while December is the annual trough. For Australians planning a wallpaper project, the practical takeaway is simple: order samples in January, because February is when the whole country has the same idea.

Methodology

The Australian Wallpaper Report 2026 was researched and produced by Wallpaper Trader in June 2026. It draws on analysis of twelve months of Australian Google search trend data (with five-year context, linked inline above where the underlying Google Trends query is available); engagement analysis across TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest, including hashtag-level view and post counts (linked inline); and published 2026 trend forecasts from Pinterest, Houzz and Etsy (linked inline). Search figures are relative growth measures rather than absolute volumes; “Breakout” denotes growth above 5,000% from a low base, as classified by Google Trends. Hashtag view/post counts reflect the totals visible at time of research and will have moved on since; follow the links above for current figures. Third-party statistics are attributed to their original publishers throughout.

Media enquiries: hello@wallpapertrader.com

Curious what's rising for your own room? Browse our Art Deco and Textured & Grasscloth collections, or start with our wallpaper guides.