Four directions are defining living room wallcoverings this year. Not trends in the disposable sense — these are design choices that will still look right in five years. Here is what we are seeing in the showroom and in specifier orders right now.
Warm Earth Tones Are Replacing Cool Grey
Terracotta, ochre, oxblood, umber. The cool greys and powder blues that dominated 2022–2024 have largely given way to warmer pigments, and it makes sense: warm tones flatter incandescent and 2700K LED lighting — the temperatures most homes actually use after sunset.
Cole & Son leads this shift with its heritage mineral palette. The Malachite — Midnight/Silver is a strong example: a deep, jewel-toned ground that reads differently under morning light versus evening lamp pools.
Zoffany's Wallichi in Russet/Olive works in the same register — earthy, layered, and warm without being heavy. The Tree of Life in Spice from the same house takes the warmth further with a classic motif reinterpreted in burnt amber and ochre.
Hand-Painted Naturals at Scale
Chinoiserie panels and hand-painted florals are no longer reserved for formal dining rooms. In living rooms, they typically anchor a single feature wall — usually the wall behind the longest sofa — while the other three walls stay quiet in a limewash or grasscloth that picks up the panel's ground colour.
Sanderson's Ancient Apple Orchard from the Highgrove Collection is exactly this kind of piece: a large-scale hand-painted botanical with enough detail to carry a wall on its own.
The Stumpery panoramic by Sanderson takes a different approach — a forest floor scene that wraps a room rather than decorating a single wall. It works particularly well in open-plan spaces where you want the wallpaper to define a zone without using furniture or partitions.
Cole & Son's Hummingbirds in Duck Egg brings the same hand-crafted quality at a smaller scale — ideal for rooms where a full panoramic would compete with existing furniture.
Oversized Botanicals and Murals
Pattern repeats of 90–130 cm are reading correctly in the high-ceiling open-plan rooms that dominate Quebec and Ontario new builds. At that scale, a single repeat fills the wall above a console without the busy, sample-book look that smaller patterns produce.
Eijffinger's Botanica Mural in Emerald Garden is one of the strongest pieces in this category right now — a lush, oversized botanical that works as a single statement panel or across a full wall.
Morris & Co's Owl & Willow Indigo mural brings the same scale with a more graphic, illustrative quality — a good choice when you want impact without the soft, painterly feel of the Sanderson pieces.
Textured Wovens for Clients Who Don't Want Pattern
For rooms where pattern feels like too much, textured paperweaves, natural fibres, and grasscloths are doing the heavy lifting. They photograph as solid colour but read as material in person — the exact opposite of flat paint.
Phillip Jeffries' Abaca Royale in Cloud is a good example: a natural woven texture that adds warmth and depth without competing with art, furniture, or views.
Zoffany's Elswick Paisley in Blue Umber sits between pattern and texture — a tonal paisley that reads almost as a solid from across the room but rewards closer inspection.
How to Specify in 2026
Order a memo before committing. Living room lighting changes dramatically between morning daylight, afternoon side-light, and evening lamp pools. A sample that looks rich at noon can read flat at 8 pm. Tape the memo to the actual wall it will live on — not a nearby surface — and review it three times across one day.
If you are working with a floral like Roses in White & Blue by Rifle Paper Co., the colour temperature shift between day and evening is particularly noticeable. For geometric patterns like Connexions by Casadeco, check the alignment at corners — a tight geometric repeat requires precise installation. We can help with that through our wallpaper installation service.
More From This Room
- How to Create a Stunning Feature Wall in Your Living Room
- Maximalist vs. Minimalist: Styling Your Living Room with Luxury Wallpaper
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