Feature Wall Wallpaper - DIY on a budget!

I like feature walls! I actually prefer feature walls before wallpapering a whole room with big pattern I like feature walls! I actually prefer feature wall compared to wallpapering a whole room with big pattern wallpaper. Maybe it is because of the Nordic style and because I am used to the Nordic design which usually is quite clean and often involve white colors.

The traditional way to use a feature wall is make one whole wall as a feature wall. And that looks great and it really draws the attention to that particular wall. But there are also other ways to use a feature wall and it doesn't have to be a whole wall.

A feature wall is a wall where you hang a wallpaper or a color that stands out to the rest of the room. The purpose with a feature wall is to make it more visible than the rest of the room since the human eye have a tendency to be drawn to the things that are different and make a change.

One way to use a feature wall is to place it behind the bed in a bedroom or making the wall with a mantle piece, or something else you want to give a wow-factor, as a feature wall.

A feature wall is supposed to be awesome with big patterns and preferably have lots of color. You can also have a private picture transformed to a wallpaper and make a feature wall of something personal that you like.

Other ways to do a feature wall is to hang the wallpaper horizontally! Imagine the effect a horizontal wallpaper with strips would make in a room! You can let it stretch up in the roof to create a change in the roof. In such a room your eyes will automatically be drawn to that protruding pattern or color in the roof and it will make the room more exciting. Or you can let it continue a bit over a corner and on to the next wall which will affect the spatial sense you get when you enter a room.

There are so many different patterns and colors to work with and I often find that it is difficult to choose only one! And the great part is that we don't need to choose only one wallpaper for a feature wall! I will show you an example of this in my latest project!

I have recently redecorated two smaller rooms upstairs, where initially one room had a blue wallpaper and the other room had a light orange/pink colour. The problem with the two rooms is that they are connected with a big opening so both rooms are visible at the same time. To me, these two different colours didn't fit well together at all, so something had to be done.

I think wallpapers with big patterns can look fantastic but the two small rooms wouldn't look good with big patterns on all four wall, or eight walls in this case! I could choose wallpaper with similar colours but I wanted something more exciting for these rooms. So, I had to go about in a different way!

Since I wanted the two rooms to feel connected and look like one unit, I use a plain grey wallpaper as the basic wallpaper in both rooms. To spice things up a little, I therefor use wallpaper with big patterns and strong colour as wallpaper for feature walls. But instead of using only one wallpaper as a feature wall I use two different wallpaper. It looks great even if you use two different patterns for feature walls in one room, if you just make sure the wallpapers have the same base colour. The important thing to consider, if you want different wallpaper to go well together, is to make sure that the wallpaper you choose have a splash of the plain wallpaper that is used in both rooms. By doing so, the two rooms will seem like one unit!

I don't hang the feature wallpaper on a whole wall either. Instead I prefer to hang one or two lengths of wallpaper in a bit unstructured way in the room. I have an rough idea before I start, but I usually change my plan as a go along, and hang a feature wall where I think it is suited. Some wallpaper with big patterns need to hang at least two lengths beside one another in order to make the pattern justice and some can hang by themselves. It all depends on the pattern. If the pattern is all over the length it usually needs to be at least two, but if the pattern is located to the centre of the length it looks great to use only one length of the feature wallpaper too.

There really isn't any limits to the different ways in how to use wallpaper in this way! You can hang one coloured length of wallpaper behind a chest of drawers in the bedroom, near the kitchen table in the kitchen or use a length behind one of your favourite painting. In other words, you can use one or two length of wallpaper anywhere you want to put forward a furniture or a wall in a room.

If you are more daring than me and like big patterns and much colour you can do the opposite and use large patterns and bright colour in most of the room and use plain wallpaper as a feature.

This way to use wallpaper lengths in this way can also be a great way to save some money and cut down on the renovation costs a little if you go for high quality wallpaper on the wallpaper for the feature parts and choose a cheaper wallpaper as a plain wallpaper. But in order to get the best result you should not combine wallpapers that are too different in quality because it will definitely show and the cheaper wallpaper will only look even worse.

I am sure you have some more ideas on how to use wallpaper as a feature wall. Feel free to share them!

All of Thougtforce's hubs are authored by, Christina Lornemark

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