Kristina Wolf's House of Design

Interior Design, Accessorizing, and DIY Tips

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What Is Chinoiserie Wallpaper?

Vintage wallpapers have made a massive comeback in interior design, and the classic Eastern-influenced wallpaper called Chinoiserie is no exception. Filled with natural motifs, brilliant tropical colors, and romantic air, chinoiserie wallpaper is the kind of luxurious wall covering you need for a lounge, bedroom, or even a stylish bathroom.

Let’s explore the history of this fascinating and beautiful wall art, its key characteristics, and how you can incorporate it into your home.

History of Chinoiserie

Chinoiserie emerged in the mid-17th century in Europe, gracing the homes of nobles and royalty. The name comes from the French word “chinois,” which means Chinese, and the patterns seen in the wallpaper, fabrics, and porcelain of the time demonstrate why. The artistic and stylish designs are all hand-painted, and the images depicting beautiful flowers and exotic birds of the Far East form a pattern that never repeats.

Chinoiserie was heavily influenced by China, as well as Japan and the Far East in general. When chinoiserie designs gained popularity, Europe was very active in colonizing that part of the world, bringing back the imagery and artistic techniques of those far-off lands. Chinoiserie wallpapers were not a part of Chinese traditions but were inspired by them.

Chinoiserie designs waned in popularity by the mid 18th century but continued through to the 19th century, declining after the First Opium War (1839-1842), which was fought between China and Britain. Chinoiserie re-emerged in the 1920s when the Far East’s style and society gained popularity once again.

Today, chinoiserie wallpaper is once again surging in popularity. Though it is a vintage style of interior design, the look and feel of the wallcoverings lend themselves to both classic and modern interiors. They can complement the current interior design or contrast it successfully. If your interiors need an injection of romance, charm, and the exotic, chinoiserie wallpaper is an excellent choice.

Chinoiserie Wallpaper Characteristics

Chinoiserie wallpapers have many unique characteristics that set them apart from every other kind of wallpaper. First, they are not, in fact, paper but 100% silk material. The backing, made of rice paper, provides a solid foundation and helps stave off deterioration.

The designs of chinoiserie wallpaper are hand-painted using tempera or gouache paints. These silk paints give a luxurious watercolor look to the designs, which are all intricate and unique. Rich colors are used to paint the motifs, depicting the Far East’s flora and fauna.

When on the wall, Chinoiserie creates a mural effect and may encase an entire room in design, working around doors and windows effortless due to the non-repeating pattern.

Modern chinoiserie wallpaper uses adhesive and may even be removed, a great advantage when applying the exotic papers and you need to reposition a portion.

Using Chinoiserie Wallpaper

Chinoiserie wallpaper may be used in a variety of ways in your rooms. The lack of repeating patterns and the ease of removal and reapplication means you can experiment a bit. Here are some ideas for how you can use chinoiserie wallpaper to inject some bold and exotic beauty into your home.

Surrounded By Nature

Chinoiserie wallpapers are made to cover large expanses of walls, making them perfect for creating an exotic bedroom retreat. With a relaxing green or blue background and plenty of flowers, trees, and buds gracing the mural-like design, it’s a quick way to make a room spectacular.

Full wallpapering is also a good choice for a living room or sitting room, and areas of a whole wall in a library or lounge can be wallpapered, bringing the space and air of the outdoors.

Inserts and Accents

If full wall coverage isn’t the ideal choice for your space, you can use chinoiserie wallpaper on an accent wall. Choosing a wall in the room and using this beautiful wallpaper creates a thematic focal point, helping to bring the entire room together. You may also want to limit the wallpaper to a portion of the wall, such as space in a dining room above a chair rail.

Chinoiserie wallpaper may also be used in small pieces. With the addition of some crown molding and careful attention to the pattern, you can create a unique window to the outside world with your wallpaper. The effect is like a series of windows, with flora and fauna of the Far East visible.

Wallpaper designs may also be available in fabrics, allowing you to bring more attention to the design and unite the room as a whole with the addition of patterned accent pillows, table-toppers, or even painted rugs.

Learn More About Chinoiserie Wallpaper

In general, Chinoiserie wallpaper and chinoiserie design are all about adding a touch of the exotic to your interiors. Want to learn more about Chinoiserie and how you can incorporate it into your interior home design? Sign up for Kristina Wolf’s House of Design newsletter to stay in the know with all the latest interior design tips and ideas.

Wallpapering Tips for Beginners

No one starts off applying wallpaper perfectly. It involves a more complicated technique than painting with brushes and rollers, and any mistakes become permanent. If you paint a wall wrong, you can always paint over the problem. It’s harder to hide air bubbles in wallpaper.

While wallpapering is tricky at first, you can do it yourself. Following these wallpaper tips, you can get that professional look without hiring a professional.

Prepping the Room

Before you start applying the wallpaper, decide where each of your wallpaper strips will go. Using a measuring tape, work your way around the room and draw a line to mark where each strip ends.

Measuring and marking the wall will also help you determine how much wallpaper you need to buy. Multiplying how many strips you need by the height of your room will give you an approximate amount. It’s better have some left over than to not have enough, so buy around 15 to 20 percent more than your calculations say.

Finally, remove all fixtures like light switch covers and heating vents and fill any gaps you have with non-shrinking joint compound. You want the wall to have as few imperfections as possible when you start wallpapering.

Prime the Walls

Prime your walls using a wall sizing product. This product will make the walls smooth and slippery. This might sound like the opposite of what you need when sticking on wallpaper, but it helps you move the wallpaper around. You’ll rarely apply it straight the first time, so having the freedom to adjust means a lower chance of imperfection in the finished product.

This movability is particularly important when applying wallpaper to drywall. Without proper priming, you can’t get the wallpaper off if you decide to redecorate later.

Applying the Paste

Always apply the paste to the paper, not to the wall. Don’t be tempted to paint the walls with paste and stick on the wallpaper. It might seem more efficient at first, but you’ll create more work for yourself when it dries and ruins your priming.

Find a flat surface—preferably a worktable—and apply the paste using a paint roller. This technique gives you a more even spread than a paintbrush and speeds up the process. Check your wallpaper to find out which type of paste to buy.

You then want to book the paper. After you’ve applied the paste, fold the paper back on itself to soften it.

Where to Start

If you have chosen a wallpaper with a repeating pattern, it is likely that wherever it ends, the patterns won’t match. There is no perfect way to resolve this, so your best option is to start and end in the least conspicuous spot.

If you know that you plan to put a cupboard or another large piece of furniture in a particular spot, start there. Still, consider that you may want to rearrange your furniture at some point. To keep your options open, you may want to start around or above a door.

If wallpapering your home makes you nervous, don’t worry. With these wallpaper tips, you can avoid beginners’ mistakes and make anyone think you knew what you were doing from the start.

Tips for Decorating with Houseplants

If going outside doesn’t satisfy your nature craving, decorating with houseplants brings the outdoors into your home. Houseplants also give you the opportunity to garden if you have limited space in your yard.

The benefits of indoor plants aren’t limited to keeping your hands busy. They can be great for your mind, too. Studies have found that when people are surrounded by plants, they become more creative and productive. Plus, the oxygen plants provide can reduce anxiety.

Use these tips to build yourself an indoor garden by decorating with houseplants.

Coordinate Your Plants

You rarely find two different plants that are the exact same color, size, or shape. Therefore, when deciding on which houseplants to buy, you should try to coordinate rather than match them. You can still try to group plants by their coloring, but try to choose shades that complement each other.

Usually, a plant’s leaves stand out among all other parts of the plant. When you’re decorating with houseplants, consider the shapes and positioning of their leaves. Try grouping different kinds of plants to see what visual effect they have on the room. A lopsided plant may look strange by itself but could work well when placed next to something more balanced.

You can also group plants together by how many you have. If you want a symmetrical, formal look, group your plants in even numbers. On the other hand, grouping plants in odd numbers can give the room a more casual and relaxed feel.

Caring for Plants

When decorating with houseplants, remember that different plants have different needs. Some plants, like ferns, need a high level of humidity. Grouping these types of houseplants together will create a pocket of moisture and grow healthy plants.

Light also impacts your choice of plants. Some plants like full sunlight, while others prefer shade. When you choose plants, make sure you can give them the amount of natural light that helps them grow best.

If you have a lot of tall plants, make sure they aren’t obstructing other plants that might need light. Likewise, try not to group all your plants in one area if it doesn’t meet all their requirements for ideal growth.

Choosing the Right Pots

Your pots can be just as striking as the plants you put in them. Look for decorative pots that can brighten the room. If someone gives you a plant you don’t want, a beautiful pot can take your attention away from the plant.

However, not all pots work for all plants. Some will allow for too much drainage, which makes the plants dry out. Others won’t drain enough, leaving your plant sitting in excess water and putting it at risk for root rot.

If a pot is draining too much water, try placing a small stone over the hole before potting your plant. This won’t completely stop the water from getting out but should slow the drainage enough to keep your plant healthy.

If you want to brighten your home, decorating with houseplants can bring life and beauty to any room. Remember to choose plants you like and coordinate them with your space and each other. By caring for your plants properly, you’ll transform your home into an indoor oasis.

How to Choose Different Room Flooring

It’s easy to spend more time choosing the color of your walls than different room flooring. But don’t ignore the importance of the right type of flooring.

Style, color, and material matter on your walls, but your floor is much more likely to be the victim of spills and stains. You want to choose flooring that works for your lifestyle and holds up in high traffic areas.

Choosing Colors

A room’s flooring can bring a room to life. When choosing different room flooring, the colors can trick your mind into thinking the space is larger or smaller than it is. It can also affect the room’s mood and how you feel when you spend time in it.

If you have a room that feels too large, try using darker colors and warmer tones. These colors can make the room seem smaller and cozier. Conversely, lighter tones can make a smaller space feel more open.

If you’re looking to impact a room’s mood rather than its size, start with colors here, too. Different colors make people feel different things.

Whites and beiges feel open and clean, while yellow feels bright and optimistic. Browns create a rustic atmosphere. Blues make people feel calm, and red brings energy into the room.

Matching and Coordinating

If you don’t know the difference between matching and coordinating, you may want to when considering your room’s flooring.

Matching your flooring means keeping the same type throughout your home. However, coordinating means using complimenting colours and styles that work with the aesthetic of each room. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

The Right Flooring for the Right Room

Choosing your flooring shouldn’t only be about color and style. You also need to think about the practicalities. Consider how you’ll use the room, and even who will use it.

Your children might love the idea of carpet in their bedrooms, but a hard surface that’s easy to clean may work better. The same goes for the kitchen where you have a high chance of spillage. A floor that you can easily mop rather than scrub functions better in these spaces.

If you’re stuck on whether to go for style or practicality, think about how much traffic each room sees. Rooms everyone in your home uses daily would benefit from harder surfaces like tile cork or slate. Consider carpet for rooms you use less often, so you don’t have to worry about cleaning them.

Transitioning Between Floors

When deciding on different room flooring, consider when and how to transition between the different types from room to room. You can ruin your home’s aesthetic with an awkward change in flooring.

You usually see floor transitions between different rooms. But you can get more creative than that. You can have one kind of floor surrounding another, like tiles surrounded by hardwood. Try switching your flooring around a corner, too.

If you’re choosing different room flooring for each room of your home, remember that the rooms may not be level with each other. In these cases, use a transition strip to even them out. This will make the transition look better, but also makes you less likely to trip.

Expert Interior Design Secrets to Styling Shelves

Styling shelves is a great way to give your unique items the attention they deserve. Framed photos, books, and decorative pieces that you might otherwise keep stored away find a place at the forefront of the room, where they catch the eye.

secrets to styling shelves

Decorating marries style with substance. You can take something that seems purely practical and make it a stylish part of your room’s design. Shelving makes it easy to create a striking atmosphere in a room.

However, shoving everything you own onto some shelves doesn’t always work. You have think about what you want to see when you look at your shelves—and the answer isn’t a wall full of junk. Follow these simple rules to create stunning shelves.

Clear Everything Out

Shelving units are the perfect way to show off your favorite items, but you still have limited space. Choose carefully what you want on display. That doesn’t mean you need to throw everything else out, but tidying the space goes a long way.

After spending so much time curating your shelving, you don’t want to ruin the effect with unnecessary clutter.

Start with Empty Space

Before you start filling your shelves, look ahead and imagine how it might look when you’ve finished.

There will almost always be some empty space exposing the back of the shelves. Consider painting this space or filling it with a fabric or wallpaper. These finishing touches can add new layers of depth and contrast to the shelving unit.  

Choosing Books

Start with the books when you’re styling shelves. If you’re a collector, try grouping them by color. If you have a limited book selection, add bits of color throughout the shelf. Using colors sparingly will make the books you have stand out.

You can stack the books or line them up on the shelf, but never have less than three together or they’ll look sparse. At the other end of the spectrum, avoid putting more than twelve or fifteen books together, or you risk making your shelves look too crowded.

Don’t be ashamed of buying a book for looks alone. Sometimes beautiful book covers can really make your shelving unit pop, and that’s what you want.

Add Sculptures and Vignettes

Sculptures and vignettes can add a lot of character to shelving units, but only if you use them correctly. While pairing smaller sculptures with books will draw the eye, larger sculptures should stand on their own. Putting large pieces in with books or other items can make the space look cramped.

It’s easy to fine unique bits and pieces to add to your shelves. They add personality to your shelves and function as conversation pieces when you have guests.

Balance is key when you’re choosing what to put on a new shelving unit. It’s tempting to fill them with everything you own, but attractive shelves take some thought. Make sure that everything on them has a purpose. By styling shelves with carefully selected items, your room can become its own piece of art.