Retro Murals

Retro mural wallpaper puts the graphic language of the mid-century and the seventies on one wall, printed at the exact size of that wall. The designs come from European brands such as Sandberg, Glamora and Wall & Deco, and each is produced as one continuous image instead of a repeat that restarts every few feet.

How a made-to-measure mural is planned for your wall

Roll wallpaper comes in a fixed width and you make the pattern fit around it. A mural reverses that. The artwork is scaled to the width and height you give us, then printed as a numbered set of drops that go up in order, one beside the next, so the image carries on across the joins instead of starting over. On a living room wall 12 ft (3.66 m) wide and 9 ft (2.74 m) high, a bold seventies circle motif keeps its full scale. We print on non-woven wallpaper, which stays dimensionally stable as you hang it.

Wall sizes, from powder room to stairwell

This collection is made for one wall at a time, so the size of that wall decides which design still reads. The 8 ft (2.44 m) ceiling common in American homes leaves little wall above the furniture, and the calmer fifties patterns hold up better there. A stairwell climbing 16 ft (4.88 m) is the opposite case and carries a far larger composition without crowding. In an entryway or powder room the wall may be no wider than 5 ft (1.52 m), and a dense pattern then behaves like one framed panel. Send the width and the height of the wall with your order and the design is laid out to those figures.

Which retro colors hold up at wall scale

The print covers a whole wall at once, and a color that looks manageable on a sample behaves differently once it runs 10 ft (3.05 m) across. The saturated sixties and seventies tones, mustard yellow, burnt orange, terracotta and avocado green, bounce a warm cast onto the ceiling and the trim, so a warm white on the adjoining walls usually settles better than a cool one. The fifties pastels do the reverse: baby blue, powder pink and mint green stay quiet over a full wall, which is why they survive in a small room where a stronger tone would close it in. A bronze or gold sheen shifts with the angle you stand at and catches the most light near a window. The orange wallpaper collection covers the warm end of the range, the gold murals the metallic one.

Rooms where retro mural wallpaper does the most work

Behind a sofa a large graphic motif carries well, because the furniture already breaks up the lower third of the wall and you read the pattern above it. A breakfast nook takes a busier print than most people expect, since you see it in short bursts rather than all evening. In a primary bedroom keep the softer shapes behind the headboard and the textiles under it plain. The wall behind a desk is the one to think twice about, since that pattern sits in every video call. For the straight-lined end of retro the geometric murals sit closest, and for concrete and steel tones look at the industrial murals.

Ordering these retro murals from the Netherlands

Retro mural wallpaper is printed after you order, so ask for a sample before you commit. Mustard and avocado shift under warm indoor light, and a screen will not show you that. Duties and taxes are included in the price shown, shipped from the Netherlands. If you would rather work with rolls, the wider retro wallpaper range sits alongside this one, and the murals overview covers every theme we print to size.