A tiny bit of wallpaper - would that work?

[Nobiggerthanyourhand]

Hello.

I live in a house that is entirely painted white, and I think this is good, but I would quite like to see some colour.

My idea is to wallpaper the tiny little walls that jut out - 20-30cm with something like William Morris, to create a sort of secret ‘lining effect’ - a surprise strip of colour and pattern.

People don’t do this, though, do they?

Can you tell me why not? Or what I would have to think about?

Sounds great to me !
It's your home - who cares if other people haven't done it the same way? I like my red walls and suspect you wouldn't, but it's my home! :-)
Straight edge would be harder but maybe start from the outside corner and work in might be easier.

This sounds so fun! I'd love to see it you do.

I would do one of the following

1. Do the whole breast wall- this would make a nice feature wall

Or

1. Breast only- more symmetrical

Or

1. Do the sides as you suggest but paint the breast in a complementary colour

I think just the sides with a plain breast, may look slightly off. Especially if there's no fireplace or feature on this wall for balance.

Best of look. Remember paint and wallpaper can always be undone if you try something and don't like it!

I love this idea!!! I guess if you’re worried about peeling on the edges you could always go for bright colours and paint but such a lovely idea

I think any recessed walls would look better than corner walls. This looks nice behind a bookcase

You can buy border strip wallpapers typically about 15cm width but they are usually designed to be displayed horizontally as a strip either just below the ceiling or ad dado rail height, so you'll need to be careful to choose a pattern that can be vertical (eg you don't want birds perching sideways)

There's nothing wrong with the idea but wallpapers are made in rolls where one roll will completely cover a wall in a small room so it would be massively wasteful to use ordinary wallpapers for your idea.

A google for "wallpaper border William Morris" gets a lot of links worth exploring - someof the sites are selling ordinary full width wallpapers and some are selling tiny rolls of morris-printed masking tape but there's some things scattered among that should be what you want.

I think it sounds lovely as you’ve described it. Try it, live with it, and let us know whether we’ll all be doing it next year :)

My daughter has done this and it looks amazing. She has used very bold papers, full of colour. William sounds perfect.

I think it sounds like a lovely idea. One thing you might want to think about when choosing a pattern is how square/parallel the edges are down the strips. Over a full wall that isn’t truly square it’s not necessarily noticeable but might more apparent in a small skinny wall.. So, you might want a smaller busy pattern where lack of squareness would be less noticeable.

Some ideas here

www.veranda.com/decorating-ideas/a40726040/wallpaper-border-ideas/