Such fun looking at the blue ceiling with Her Grace, The Duchess of Rutland, in our Chinoiserie-inspired Palm Beach dining room. Note the pretty peach blossoms on the wall mural!
Such fun looking at the blue ceiling with Her Grace, The Duchess of Rutland, in our Chinoiserie-inspired Palm Beach dining room. Note the pretty peach blossoms on the wall mural!
Oh, I adore wallpaper and especially elegant murals! Do you as well? Handpainted murals can be traced back to the 14th century in China, where they were painted on rice paper. As a designer, I am especially keen on specifying murals by renowned companies: de Gournay, Gracie, and Zuber. They are sumptuously divine in quality of design and historical references. They can be, and rightfully so due to the quality of production, rather expensive… which probably serves to reinforce their panache! An elegantly designed mural is rich with depth (versus paint) and will enhance an interior wall or an entire room.
Would you like to know my little wallpaper trick? It is so easy to do and can be very effective for various applications. After the wallpaper has been installed, take the leftover wallpaper and see if there is any part of the design that can be cut out and reused somewhere else. Whether it is pasted on top of wallpaper that you just installed or applied on top of another wall, you will then create your own bespoke design!
A clever installation of wallpaper in this room with the flowers climbing onto the ceiling. Photo Credit: @themichaelmundy for @elledecor
I used my wallpaper trick when we first purchased “Petite Fox,” our pied-a-terre in Palm Beach, which was a plain white, bland modern space. (But what it lacked in character and warmth was made up for by the simply spectacular view of the ocean!) I could not wait to design this blank canvas.
A “before” picture of Petite Fox. Here, our Chinoiserie-inspired chandelier was just installed, and a few pieces of the crown moulding had been delivered
For the dining room, I designed a bespoke wooden pagoda, in a peach color. The white Chinese Chippendale fretwork was created to be placed on top of mirrors to embellish the dining room walls. I purposely left a portion of the wall blank to feature the mural of a Chinese-inspired tree. I had a tight time frame for the mural to be installed, and a pair of mural panels by F. Schumacher, “Madame de Pompadour,” in aqua, were readily available: one and done! The peach-colored blossoms on the tree complimented my pagoda perfectly! But, once installed, I realized that the peach blossoms were located near the bottom of the tree and not really visible. So, my trusty wallpaper trick came in handy once again.
After the wallpaper was installed, I took the scraps of the leftover mural paper and carefully cut out a few additional peach flowers. I told my installer where to paste them on the branches of the tree on top of the mural wallpaper so they would be clearly visible. The additional peach blossoms served to enhance the color of the pagoda. Voila, I now had a bespoke wallpaper!
GrandMillennial Tips:
~When cutting out detailed aspects from wallpaper, try using petite manicure scissors. They can easily be maneuvered around the delicate edges of the design.
The pair of bows gracing the top of these precious pony watercolor paintings from London, in the kitchen at Fox Hall, are the cut-out leftover pieces from another wallpaper. Now, I hope you, too, will be inspired to look at your wallpaper leftovers with a creative eye!
~The wallpaper details you cut out can also be used on the ceiling, in a bookcase, or around a blase mirror frame… endless places!
~Consider painting the ceiling in a color featured within the wallpaper. I had the aqua background in the mural painted on our ceiling, and it served to enhance the tonality of the ocean view in the distance.
On another note, the racing season is upon us! The Kentucky Derby is on May 6th, so I am offering an exclusive discount for my Equestrian Collection 5-piece porcelain collection ONLY until May 1st. You can now properly dress your table for a Triple Crown and an Ascot party! The “secret price” is at www.shophollyholden.com. Thank you for sharing this offer with your “horsey friends” too.
Xx
Holly
PS Take a peek at “Hello Holly,” located after my darling Sponsors. You can read several charming remarks in response to the SLL newsletter, “Two Thoughtful Gestures.”