Morris & Co Wallpaper

Morris & Co wallpaper puts British design history on an American wall, and a few practical things change on this side of the Atlantic. The drawings stay as they were: stems curling back on themselves, flowers flattened into pattern, color kept low and warm. What differs is the wall you hang them on and the way you plan the job.

How the patterns read on American walls

Smooth drywall and high ceilings suit these designs better than people expect. A large-scale floral opens up under a 10 ft (3.05 m) ceiling that a low cottage room would crowd. The powder room is the obvious place to start: four short walls, one botanical, done in an afternoon. An entryway or stair wall works the same way. On an open-plan floor, one papered wall behind the dining table marks a zone no rug or paint color defines as clearly. Prime new drywall before you paste and the seams sit flatter for years.

Measuring a wall for Morris & Co rolls

Morris designs often carry a long repeat, one motif continuing across several strips, so the wall itself decides the roll count. Measure floor to ceiling at both ends of the wall and work from the taller of the two figures; an older room is rarely square. Allow for the pattern loss that a long repeat costs you, then order the whole job in one go rather than in stages. A second order crosses the ocean again, and may come off a different print run.

Choosing a Morris & Co wallpaper collection

The range keeps returning to the nineteenth-century archive, redrawn in current colorways. Melsetter Archive V, Compendium II and Queen Square each draw on that archive. Pure Morris holds the same motifs in a calmer palette, often the easier route in a bright room, while Simply Morris and Emery Walker's House read them again in their own way. The Morris & Co fabrics run alongside the paper when wall and textile need to match, and our Room Visualizer shows a pattern on a photo of your room.

The drawings behind the collections

William Morris based his first design, Trellis, on roses climbing through the garden at his own house in 1862, and it is still printed. Fifty designs came from his hand, each printed off woodblocks with one block per color, a slow method chosen against the industrial printing of the day. The plants are British natives: daisies, willow, ivy. Production today uses hard-wearing qualities with a matte, velvety surface close to that block printing.

Buying from a European dealer

Selected Wallpapers is an official Morris & Co dealer with samples available online, so you can judge a colorway in your own light first. Import duties and taxes are settled in advance, so the courier hands over the rolls with nothing to pay. Questions about a color or a roll count? Our team answers personally.