Wallpaper Ideas for Bedroom Walls: Feature Walls, Dark Prints and Florals

The strongest wallpaper ideas for bedroom walls are a feature wall behind the bed, a dark print that wraps the room in colour, a botanical or floral pattern that brings the garden indoors, and a small-scale repeat for a small room. Add fabric in the same print, take your colours from the paper, and the room holds together as one story.

Below are the wallpaper ideas for bedroom walls we return to in our own homes, with the practical details that help you choose.

Key takeaways

• Start with the wall behind the bed: it frames the headboard and is the wall you face when you walk in.
• Dark grounds make a bedroom feel enveloping and calm in the evening.
• Match the scale of the print to the size of the room and the height of the wall.
• Repeat the colours of the wallpaper in the bedding, cushions and curtains so the room reads as one.

1. A feature wall behind the bed

A single papered wall is the gentlest way into pattern, and the wall behind the bed is the obvious place for it. The headboard sits in front of it like a frame, so the print becomes a backdrop for the bed itself. It is also the wall you see from the doorway, which gives the room its first impression.

Choose a print with enough presence to hold a whole wall. Our Trees wallpaper, from the Astral Sea collection, sets rows of slender ornamental pines in calm natural tones, and behind a bed it reads like a quiet forest at dusk. A feature wall in a bedroom works best when the other walls stay plain and pick up a colour from the paper, so the pattern has room to breathe.

2. Dark and moody bedroom wallpaper

A dark bedroom wallpaper feels counterintuitive until you sleep in one. A deep ground absorbs light, softens the corners of the room and makes lamplight glow, which is exactly what a bedroom wants after dark.

Our Iceflower Blue wallpaper is a good example. Frosted leaves and flowers in layered blues sit on a deep navy ground, picked out with fine coral lines that catch the eye up close. Lily of the Valley Dark takes a quieter route: teal and green leaves on a dark aubergine ground, scattered with pale dots of blossom, with frogs and butterflies hiding among the leaves.

A few things help a dark scheme feel restful:

• Paint the woodwork and ceiling in a muted shade drawn from the paper, so the room feels deliberate.
• Use warm, low lamps at the bedside and keep the overhead light for daytime.
• Add pale linen bedding or a light throw for contrast where you rest your head.

3. Botanical and floral wallpaper for the bedroom

Floral wallpaper in the bedroom has a long history, and it still makes sense: flowers and leaves bring a sense of the outdoors into the most private room in the house. The difference lies in the drawing. A detailed, narrative print gives you something new to notice each time you look.

Our Lilac Blue wallpaper was inspired by the scent of early summer and its long days. Blue lilac blossom and green leaves spread across a dark brown ground, mirrored around a branching trunk, with small insects tucked into the flowers. The pattern is large in scale with a long repeat, which gives the feeling of sitting inside a lilac hut. Pheasants and Rhubarbs comes from Klaus Haapaniemi's childhood garden, where pheasants walked under the rhubarb leaves stealing gooseberries.

4. Wallpaper ideas for small bedrooms

Small bedrooms take pattern well. Papering every wall of a compact room blurs the corners, so the walls seem to recede. A busy, small-scale repeat suits this approach better than a single huge motif, which can feel cut off on a short wall.

Look at the repeat height on each product page. Our Grasshopper wallpaper has a 43 cm repeat, with coral and pink flowers, deep red-brown leaves and pale blue winged insects on a soft blue ground. A short repeat like this also wastes less paper on each drop, which helps in a room with low walls or sloping ceilings. If you prefer a lighter ground, Lily of the Valley in soft tones and Summer Ceremony, a geometric design in airy pastels and brights, keep a small room fresh.

5. Wrap the room or paper the ceiling

Once you are confident with one wall, consider the whole room. Wrapping all four walls in one print turns a bedroom into a cocoon, and it suits rooms with plenty of natural light, where the pattern can be enjoyed by day.

The ceiling is the fifth wall, and in a bedroom it is the one you look at most. Papering it in the same print as the walls makes a low room feel enclosed and intimate, while a lighter print overhead can lift a room with dark walls. Hanging paper on a ceiling is a job for a professional decorator, so ask yours about the room before you order.

6. Match the wallpaper with fabric

The most complete bedroom schemes repeat the same print on the walls and in the textiles. Several of our designs are printed both as wallpaper and as fabric, including Grasshopper, Iceflower Blue, Lilac Blue, Lily of the Valley Dark, Pheasants and Rhubarbs and Black Lake. You can find them all in our fabric and wallpaper collection.

Our fabrics are sold by the metre in linen-cotton, 142 cm wide, and velvet, 137 cm wide. Some ways to use them in a bedroom:

1. Curtains in the same print make the window disappear into the wall, which is calming in a small room.
2. An upholstered headboard in matching fabric lets the bed sink into the pattern behind it.
3. A chair or footstool in the print, placed across the room, ties the far corner back to the bed.

The material changes the mood of the same design. On our Pheasants and Rhubarbs fabric, the colours are rendered very bright on velvet, while the linen is more neutral.

7. Take your colours from the print

A good wallpaper hands you a palette. Pick two or three colours from the paper and repeat them in the bedding, cushions and a throw at the foot of the bed. With Iceflower Blue, that might be navy bedding with a coral cushion. With Lilac Blue, think chocolate brown and cornflower blue.

Layering the bed is where the scheme comes alive. A scatter of printed cushions in one shared colour carries the wallpaper onto the bed without competing with it. You will find more on building a room around one print, including a maximalist bedroom and statement walls, in our guide to maximalist decor.

8. Before you order: rolls, repeats and samples

A few practical details make the difference between a wall you love and one you live with:

• Roll size. Our wallpapers come in rolls 70 cm wide and 10 m long.
• Paper finish. Most designs are printed on uncoated non-woven paper. Some are printed on matt coated non-woven paper, and a few offer both: uncoated for softer colours, matt coated for shinier and more vibrant ones.
• Repeat. Repeat heights range from 43 cm on Grasshopper to 173 cm on the Lilac designs. A longer repeat needs more paper per drop.
• Samples. Order a sample by email, or visit our Helsinki store to see the full range. Opened rolls cannot be returned, so a sample is worth the wait.
• Hanging. Our wallpapers are paste-the-wall papers, hung with ready-mixed paste applied directly to the wall, and full instructions come inside the roll.

As a rough guide, a wall 3.5 m wide and 2.5 m high needs five drops. With Iceflower Blue's 72 cm repeat, each drop takes up to about 3.2 m, so a roll gives three drops and two rolls cover the wall. With the 173 cm repeat on Lilac Blue, each drop may take about 4.2 m, so you would need three rolls. Ask your decorator to confirm before you order.

All our wallpapers are printed digitally in the UK. Digital printing uses less ink than screen printing and less water, because there are no screens to wash between colours, and we print only as many rolls as are needed, so there is very little printing waste.

Frequently asked questions

What type of wallpaper is best for a bedroom?

A good-quality non-woven wallpaper suits most bedrooms. It is straightforward to hang because the paste goes on the wall, and you can remove marks from ours by wiping gently with a clean, lightly damp cloth. Choose the pattern for how you want the room to feel at night.

What is the best wallpaper colour for a bedroom?

There is no single answer, but deep blues, greens and browns make a bedroom feel calm and enclosed, and they glow under warm lamplight. Softer, lighter grounds suit small or north-facing rooms. Whatever the colour, repeat it in your bedding and curtains.

What are the current trends for bedroom wallpapers?

Dark, enveloping grounds, botanical and floral prints, papered ceilings and wallpaper matched with fabric in the same print are all popular choices. We prefer to choose a design you will still love in ten years, which is why our prints draw on folklore and nature.

What is the best wallpaper design for a bedroom?

A design you can live with at close range. Detailed, narrative prints reward a second look, and a feature wall behind the bed is the classic place to start. Match the scale of the print to the room: large repeats for big walls, smaller repeats for compact rooms.

Find your bedroom wallpaper

A bedroom wallpaper sets the mood for both ends of the day. Start with the wall behind the bed, choose a print with a story you want to wake up to, and let the colours travel into the textiles. Explore our digitally printed wallpaper and fabric, each design drawn from the natural world.

Klaus Haapaniemi & Co. is a Finnish design house that designs, prints and produces its own homeware and clothing, founded in 2010 by designer Mia Wallenius and artist Klaus Haapaniemi.