Mica wallpaper

Mica wallpaper is one of the few wall coverings that is literally made of stone. The mineral cleaves into sheets thinner than a fingernail, and those flakes are sorted and set by hand onto a non-woven ground. What ends up on your wall is mineral, not ink, and it behaves like mineral: it answers the light instead of sitting still under it.

How mica wallpaper is split from stone and laid by hand

Every flake catches light at its own angle, so the surface never reads as one flat tone. Walk across the room and the sheen travels with you. Because the material is sorted rather than printed, no two rolls come out identical: small shifts in color and grain belong to the stone. Up close you can pick out the edges of the individual pieces; under your palm there is a fine, gritty relief.

Mica against printed metallics and woven naturals

A printed metallic wallpaper lays its shine down as one even film that looks the same from any spot in the room. Mica scatters instead. Set it beside grasscloth or paperweave and the kinship is obvious, except that grass absorbs light where mica returns it. For the same handmade surface without the gleam, our textured wallpaper range covers the matte end of it.

Rooms and lighting for mica wallpaper

Grazing light wakes the material up, so look for walls that light travels across rather than hits head on. A powder room with sconces flanking the mirror is close to ideal: little square footage, plenty of return. An entryway or stair wall changes as you climb past it. Behind a headboard in the primary bedroom it stays quiet by day and warms up under bedside lamps at night. Recessed cans washing a wall from directly overhead flatten the effect, so angle them or add a picture light.

Hanging mica wallpaper on drywall

Paste the wall, not the paper. On sound, primed drywall the non-woven backing goes up without soaking or shrinking back. Keep hands and tools clean: adhesive that dries on the mineral face dulls it and will not sponge away as it does on vinyl. Roll sizes vary per brand, so start with the wall: measure height and run in feet and inches (an 8 ft wall is 2.44 m) and let our wallpaper calculator convert to the metric rolls European mills produce.

European brands in our mica selection

Our mica comes from European wallcovering houses: Masureel, Texam Home and Zinc Textile are the ones to start with. All three set the mineral on a non-woven backing, so what you are really choosing between is the color of the ground underneath and how densely the flakes are laid over it. Neither of those survives a screen. Order samples, tape them up on the wall you have in mind, and look at them at the hour you actually use the room. Duties and taxes are included in the price shown, and every order ships from the Netherlands.