Seriously, I need feature wallpaper / general decorating advice

[GrendelsMum]

So, if feature wallpaper is out, what are we all supposed to be doing next?

I tried doing a bit of research and it seems that following current trends, you can put wallpaper on all walls of your room, on some walls of your room seemingly at random, or just have painted walls.

It seemed that possibly what was out is having a very striking feature wall combined with very muted other walls - there seems to be much more equality of focus / colour from wall to wall, and a use of much brighter colours.

Responses from the design savvy? And what magazine is it best to read in order to get ahead of the game in design terms?

In case it seems I'm taking this too seriously, I actually see it as a money-saving exercise - if we can know what's trendy, we can either knowingly avoid it or go for it and avoid the problem of things dating rapidly.

see while i'm inclined to agree with you, it doesn't follow for all rooms. in our room we thought about it but it would have looked like an hr giger painting, we reckoned, all refracted and reflected and going in different directions.

oi, you lot. send a congrat to habbibu here she's just had a baby.

i remember one night in france we stayed in a room which was toilefantastic. i mean even the bin was covered in toile. DH di come across all dizzy and said he had a headache in the morning
which was actually code for dont even think of trying this at home.

All these ideas sound lovely.

Wasabi okay not much help but DH thought dark mahogony wooden skirts would be appropriate or dark painted deep and tall ones. Consensus as from below links seems to be there is no consensus.

stained dark woodwork

painted or grained to look like wood or marbleised

never left unpainted

best wallpaper website ever

oh yes, hambler, that's who we bought ours from, saved about 25% i think.

I am thinking of getting the harlequin brighton paper from that site for our downstairs loo.bargain!

oh that will be fab in a loo. oddly, i don't much like the look of it repeated over a huge wall, but it's charming in a small space imo.

did you ALL say congrats to habbibu?

No not good in a big space but as I live in a street like that in brighton i love it!I can put a big box of coloured pens in tehre and people can colour them in!

it's really lovely, you should deffo do it. i'd forgotten how useful that site is for getting the look of the paper on the wall. now i want wallpaper in our bathroom, of course.

i want this one somewhere i bricked it at the last minute for the front room, i think we're too cluttered already for it. but somewhere, sometime...

by bricked it, i mean didn't do it. not that i bricked our wall, oh no.

Oh thats lovely I have a lovely bird blind that I have been carting around for years and its still not up!I have brick in our bedroom and bathroom I love it!

Charleymouse thanks for those links - found them v interesting!

Aitch I LOVE that wallpaper. Still trying to sell the whole wallpaper concept to DH.

ah yes, but brick in a front room = jack and vera duckworth iykwim? i have a pal with an AMAZING sandstone block wall in her kitchen, exposed while she took the lath and plaster off to redo it. it does look lovely but it's bloody cold in winter.

I left bits exposed here and there as we replastered almost the whole house.i have one wall in the bathroom with a big vintage n=mirror on it and chilmey breast with open fire in bedroom so cosy!