Why wallpaper is the right stuff

ShopFront: Forget dreary stripes and florals - wallpaper can be cool if you know how to use it.

Despite it's rediscovery by fashionable interior designers, magazines and whoever else has a say in what becomes the thing of the moment, for most people wallpaper still evokes miserable floral prints or dreary stripes.

It isn't surprising, because there are still a lot of both around. But while there are also many new wallpaper ideas, it's hard to say if there is a particular pattern, style or colour that is more popular than another.

What's different is the way wallpaper is used.

Most of the time it seems to be used in a controlled manner rather than covering every wall of a room.

In much the same way as one wall is sometimes painted a different colour to create a feature in a featureless room, or draw the eye inwards, wallpaper can look effective covering the wall behind a bed or surrounding a fireplace. The other walls in the room can then be painted a relating colour.

This works best if the paint colour is not too strong: the wallpaper should be allowed be the strongest thing in the room. Other ways to use a small amount of wallpaper is in the space between rows of windows or, if the paper is beautiful enough, as stand-alone panels.

Perhaps the best thing about wallpaper, and the reason it was popular before, is that it hides slight bumps on an uneven wall - but now, papering a whole room tends to look best in very large or very small rooms.

A large room, particularly in a very traditional interior, can take darker colours or heavier textures like damasks. Small rooms, like a toilet, can't take many repeats, so choose something with a small pattern.

What constitutes wallpaper has also changed: materials that wouldn't have been seen much here a few years ago, such as refined grass or broken mica stone, are now available at Merrion Square Interiors, albeit at a high price.

For something more conventional but less expensive, B&Q has some surprisingly beautiful papers: ask about Tate Enchanted, a relief vertical print of silvery twisting flowers.

Flowers with a hand-painted look tend to be difficult to find here, but a selection from Cole & Son and Colefax & Flower can be ordered from London.