Have fun designing your own Wallpaper
The use of decorative paper to adorn the interiors of homes and other buildings can be traced back to early 16th Century Europe. Once a status symbol of the rich and elite, wallpaper became accessible and affordable to the mass market in the 1900s. For many years to come, walls decked from corner to corner in the busy patterns and colours that were fashionable throughout the era became one of the most recognisable hallmarks of the working and middle class 20th Century home.
Call us to discuss your wallpaper requirements
Fashion eventually grew tired of wallpaper, and thus it spent the end of the century living in societal exile, considered a passé symptom of an outdated and unstylish home.
However, after the turn of the millennium, this old decor favourite enjoyed something of a domestic rebirth. To everybody’s surprise, wallpaper became cool again. With a fresh twist on an old tradition, we began to see colourful feature walls and bold patterns re-emerging throughout modern homes.
So commonplace it is, now, to be greeted in somebody’s living room by a bright floral mantle piece or retro geometric alcoves, that you would be forgiven for wanting to find something a little more unique to stamp your individuality on your home interiors.
Here is the good news. With modern printing technology and high quality wallpaper products it is now possible to bring your personalised designs right into your own home. Perhaps you are a budding artist with a yearning for a supersized canvas, or you might have an old swatch of your aunt’s vintage 1960s wallpaper that you would love to recreate. Have you ever looked at one of your stunning holiday snaps and thought how awesome it would look blown up over an entire wall? Well now, your options are virtually unlimited.
Through companies such as Resene, WallTorque or Colour Plus, you can simply upload a high quality image file onto their website, and they will do the rest of the work. Many even offer free online design software to help you create your own masterpiece there and then. Your design can be printed onto the same kind of wallpaper you would buy in rolls at the home furnishings store that is applied with wallpaper paste, such as that offered by Resene. Alternatively, some companies offer types of self-adhesive removable and sometimes even reusable wall sheets.
When you upload your image onto your chosen company’s software, it should be auto checked for any pixilation or quality issues. If you are given a low resolution warning, you will need to find a bigger image file (normally a minimum 3-5mb file size is recommended) or select a different image. Otherwise, there is little that can’t be done, however no company will print copyrighted images for your walls. In other words, the image file must either be selected from their gallery (some of which contain millions of templates) or owned by you. So if you were hoping to deck out your walls with images of your favourite cartoons, you will unfortunately need to go back to the drawing board!
A good wallpaper printing company will have steps online which allow you to view your image on a digital ‘wall’ and insert any obstructions you have in the wall in your home. So if you have a door, fireplace or window on the wall in question, you can mark these out ahead of time and ensure they will not interfere too much with the design you want to print.
Designing your own wallpaper is a sure way to give your home that real wow factor and make it stand out from the crowd. Imagine hosting your next dinner party surrounded by – well – just about anything you could possibly desire! Don’t be bound by the constraints of high street design trends; let your imagination run away…
When your wallpaper is ready let us hang it professionally for you
