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Benji and Zoe Marshall's home
Watch 4:36

Benji and Zoe Marshall's home

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Room Recipe: How to do a bold floral wallpaper feature wall

Room Recipe: How to do a bold floral wallpaper feature wall

This stunning new wallpaper collection is the luxe your home décor needs

This stunning new wallpaper collection is the luxe your home décor needs

5 unexpected ways to use wallpaper in your home

5 unexpected ways to use wallpaper in your home

5 unique ways to use removable wallpaper

5 unique ways to use removable wallpaper

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Florence Broadhurst's original designs are for sale

Florence Broadhurst's original designs are for sale

House Rules kicks off with biggest design challenge ever

House Rules kicks off with biggest design challenge ever

LLB chooses Australia to launch his own wallpaper collection

LLB chooses Australia to launch his own wallpaper collection

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Scratch and sniff wallpaper is real

Scratch and sniff wallpaper is real

Five ways to a fabulous feature wall

Five ways to a fabulous feature wall

The Pinterest trend we can't get enough of

The Pinterest trend we can't get enough of

The easily removable wallpaper perfect for renters

The easily removable wallpaper perfect for renters

This is the trend taking over interiors right now

This is the trend taking over interiors right now

You can buy royal wedding wallpaper

You can buy royal wedding wallpaper

5 amazing kids bedroom decorating ideas

5 amazing kids bedroom decorating ideas

  1. Home
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Wallpaper feature walls explained by an expert

House Rules' LLB on how to make it work - by Lynne Testoni
  • 12 Jun 2018
Wallpaper feature walls explained by an expert

A feature wall of a dramatic black wallpaper in Leigh and Kristie’s home scored highly with the House Rules judges.

Colourful and knowledgeable, judge and interiors expert Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is a big fan of wallpaper and shares his tips on how to make it work in a home.

“Wallpaper is very much becoming a mainstay on House Rules now,” he says. “This wall [in Leigh and Kristie’s house] really sold the idea of wallpaper to the contestants, as far as we were concerned; it absolutely changed everyone’s view.”

How to do a wallpaper feature wall | Home Beautiful Magazine Australia

UK-based Laurence admits that wallpaper is more common in England – “we revived it 20 years ago so we've been going a lot longer” – so he feels the English are more comfortable with the product and thinks Australians are still learning how to make it work.

“It's still a new product out here,” he says.

His tip with the wallpaper used in Rye is that it could have worked even better had it been paired with darker painted walls in the room, rather than white.

“That feature wall with the wallpaper is magnificent, but in fact, the rest of the room should have been painted a lovely dark charcoal,” he observes. “This is a snug, this is an escape. It doesn't need to be a light bright area.”

"Never forget, something like a dark charcoal is the ultimate, ultimate neutral. It's an amazing colour."

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

“Feature walls have to have a relationship to the other walls. It can’t just be a collision. And actually, it's often better with a flat colour.  In Australia, there's often too much light, so actually, a colour like dark charcoal is a great way of doing stuff about that.”

"I want to see a reinterpretation of traditional shapes. These are the sort of things people are really enjoying in Europe at the moment."

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
How to do a wallpaper feature wall | Home Beautiful Magazine Australia

Laurence is a big fan of design icon and wallpaper innovator Florence Broadhurst, and feels that she has been often overlooked by her fellow Australians. He singled out the interiors of the Auction home as an example of how her designs can be used in a contemporary way.

“It's my mission to get everyone out of that good taste, mid-century modern cliché,” he says. “Australia deserves much more than that. I want to see more heritage coming in, but in a very modern way. Obviously, I want to see a lot more colour. You think back to Florence Broadhurst, or the Australian impressionist painters. 

“I'm using very, very deliberate flash points, from the Australian design aesthetic history, to get our contestants to move things forward a bit.

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Benji and Zoe Marshall's home
Watch 4:36

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Room Recipe: How to do a bold floral wallpaper feature wall

Room Recipe: How to do a bold floral wallpaper feature wall

This stunning new wallpaper collection is the luxe your home décor needs

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5 unexpected ways to use wallpaper in your home

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5 unique ways to use removable wallpaper

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Florence Broadhurst's original designs are for sale

Florence Broadhurst's original designs are for sale

House Rules kicks off with biggest design challenge ever

House Rules kicks off with biggest design challenge ever

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LLB chooses Australia to launch his own wallpaper collection

{headline}

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Scratch and sniff wallpaper is real

Scratch and sniff wallpaper is real

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Five ways to a fabulous feature wall

The Pinterest trend we can't get enough of

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The easily removable wallpaper perfect for renters

The easily removable wallpaper perfect for renters

This is the trend taking over interiors right now

This is the trend taking over interiors right now

You can buy royal wedding wallpaper

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5 amazing kids bedroom decorating ideas

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