HOME DESIGN : Trendy Coverings Aren’t Off-the-Wall

If your image of wallpaper is cute little patterns in nurseries, bathrooms and kitchens, it’s time to update your thinking.

And probably your walls.

The world of wallpaper has expanded dramatically in recent years, enabling interior designers to create looks they call sophisticated, warm, elegant, classic--anything but cute.

And while the range of wallpaper patterns has grown, consumers have discovered other ways of dressing up their walls. They’re hiring artists to paint everything from simple decorations to elaborate scenes. Or covering entire rooms with fabrics as sumptuous as silk and suede. Even designer sheets are appearing on today’s trendiest walls (at prices as high as $110 a yard for the popular Ralph Lauren label).

Upholstered walls provide the most luxurious look--and almost unlimited choices, because any fabric can be applied to a wall, says Janet Kay Lang of Soussan Interiors in Santa Ana.

Those who don’t find the pattern they want can have the fabric custom-painted, she notes.

“Everybody in California wants their own look,” Lang says. With so many fabrics available for upholstering walls, she can give her clients that individuality. But, she adds, “it’s for people who want to make a definite statement.”

Among her clients is Fred Gamm, a Huntington Harbour entrepreneur who spent $125,000 buying fabric and having it installed on nearly every wall of his spacious home.

“I wanted a different look--something other than wallpaper or paint,” he says.

He also wanted better acoustics to get the most out of his high-tech sound system, so he had the ceilings as well as the walls covered.

“It’s very contemporary, very dramatic,” says Lang, noting that upholstered walls can also help create a traditional look.

The dominant fabric used throughout Gamm’s home is solid peach with an abstract, custom-silk-screened black design serving as a border. A soft plaid pattern adds a masculine touch to his home office, and a contemporary flowered print brightens up the kitchen.

Although few projects are as costly as Gamm’s, upholstered walls are not for the budget-conscious, Lang says. Costs range from $20 to $300 a yard for the fabric, plus as much as $35 a yard for installation. (Wallpaper installation usually costs $15 to $20 a roll, designers say.)

What makes upholstered walls so different--and tricky to install--is not just the use of fabric instead of paper, but also the polyester padding over which the fabric is laid.

The material can be gathered or quilted for a particularly unusual effect. But even when it is laid flat, the padding gives it a three-dimensional look.

Costa Mesa interior designer Patricia Mickey explains: “When you upholster a wall, it’s more cushy. It’s looser--like a big, fluffy sofa as opposed to a tailored one.”

Mickey chose the tailored look for the Newport Beach condominium she designed in “classic, contemporary Mediterranean” style for Lee West, owner of Newport Imports.

She used a combination of the latest wallpapers, textured painting and paper-backed fabrics, which hug the wall like paper but have a softer, warmer effect.

Each room in the 4,000-square-foot condo has a different wall treatment, but the same fabric appears in the living room and hallways, and muted earth tones are used throughout.

“You need some kind of continuity,” Mickey explains. “You don’t want it to look like a furniture store where every room is a different vignette.”

The “theme” wall covering is a lightly blushed, beige-colored fabric with a subtle brocade design. It even appears on the vertical blinds, so they blend in when closed instead of jarring the eye. Other fabrics used in the upstairs rooms include ultra suede and silk.

A beige wallpaper with a soft, textured look appears in the kitchen.

“The direction toward texture is a fairly recent trend,” Mickey says. “Wallpaper used to be more pictorial and one-dimensional. The texture doesn’t just give you color or pattern--it provides ambience.”

Textured painting was used to create a special effect in the downstairs bathroom, where the walls look like ostrich skin. It took 15 coats of paint to create the smooth finish on which countless little “goose bumps” were applied by hand. (West, who has an ostrich-skin briefcase and shoes, says he finds the texture “interesting.”)

Textured painting was also used to make the wine cellar look like a cave, and Mickey even gave the laundry room special treatment, covering its walls with limestone that also dominates an adjacent bathroom.

West said he was thrilled with the results, which not only gave him something unusual but also made his long, narrow condo appear more spacious.

“It has a light, airy feeling that makes it seem bigger than it is, and that’s what I was after,” he says.

Mickey calls the overall look of West’s home “avant-garde.” She acknowledges that most people prefer more traditional--and less costly--wall coverings.

For them, vinyl wallpaper is the answer, designers say. There are so many options in today’s market that even some designers find the choices overwhelming. Customers who aren’t satisfied with what’s ready-made can select a pattern and plug in their own choice of colors, says Kim Farthing of Farthing Interiors in Newport Beach.

She says the recent trend toward textured painting directly on walls is giving way to textured papers because they offer a wider range of colors. They start at about $30 for a single roll and go up to $60 or more.

Most in demand, she says, are papers with high-gloss, white backgrounds and muted patterns or geometric shapes in pastel shades.

“It’s soft, sedate, very elegant. It states class,” she says. “It makes your room look more spacious. You’re providing a soft background on which to build. And it goes with contemporary and traditional.”

But not everyone wants wallpaper to serve merely as a background. Some use it to make a statement so strong it becomes a work of art.

Anne Layman, a Corona del Mar artist who creates wallpaper and fabric patterns for Country Life Designs in Costa Mesa, says the traditional Country French look is popular in Orange County, particularly in the beach areas, where homes tend to be open and airy.

She paints large bouquets of flowers in bright primary colors against a white background for her Country Life designs, which are silk-screened on paper or fabric by hand.

“It’s a fresh, bright, country look. And it’s very popular,” says Layman .

One of her most recent designs is a green lattice pattern on white with a border of roses.

“It looks three-dimensional. It’s more than wallpaper. You get the feeling of being inside a gazebo,” she says.

Layman also creates trompe l’oeil illusions in the murals and decorations she paints directly on walls.

“Hand painting on walls is very trendy--and very expensive,” she says, noting that her $350-per-day fee is marked up 30% to 50% by the designers for whom she works.

She receives many requests for faux windows with country scenes that provide the illusion of a view in rooms that beg for a feeling of space, she says.

She also is frequently hired to paint decorative borders on walls in floral patterns that match bedspreads, upholstered furniture or tiles.

“I paint flowers on everything,” she says. “Flowers are so Orange County.”

Donna Dussault of Wallpapers to Go in Orange agrees.

She says her customers, who buy paper off the shelf for prices as low as $7.99 for a single roll, are “very traditional--they like flowers and lots of borders.”

“They’re papering everything--bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, kitchens,” says Dussault. “There’s so much available today. There’s a wonderful selection in florals, pastels, muted colors--whatever you want.”

Because there are so many patterns, she says, customers are encouraged to take rolls of paper home and tack them on the wall to make sure they work before making a purchase. They also can take home oversized books filled with wallpaper samples. And Dussault, an interior designer, will visit customers’ homes for a small fee to advise those who need help making a selection.

Patricia Mickey stresses that standard, vinyl wallpaper is “definitely not out of style,” in spite of the availability of more exotic wall coverings.

“It can be used to add interest to a room at a fairly low cost,” she says.

But if you want your walls to make a statement, don’t be restricted by the idea of wallpaper as background, she advises.

It can be much more, Mickey notes--”a focal point, a jumping-off point for a theme.”