Wallpaper in Midwest Living Magazine

Always cool to see wallpaper featured in a decorating magazine, to nudge homeowners toward using paper in their own homes. This dark jungle pattern is a dramatic transition from entry to living room.

No boring all-white walls here! Bold color and a pattern full of visual movement make this powder room a fun and energizing space. As I like to say – you can get away with a lot of drama in a small space like a powder room!

Porter Teleo Wallpaper in Midwest Living Magazine

Porter Teleo is a custom-made, high-end wallpaper. Extra cool that it’s made in my home state of Missouri. So nice to see it getting exposure in Midwest Living (Jan/Feb 2022 issue).

Wish they had included some larger photos of the actual material, so y’all can get an idea of what their patterns look like.

Wallpaper in Midwest Living Magazine

These two rooms were featured in the March/April 2019 issue of Midwest Living.

The first wallpaper pattern is in an entry, and is by Schumacher, a well-established company. The bathroom pattern is by Jana Bek. She has some pretty interesting, coordinating lamps on her website. She sells linens, too – as you can see the curtains reflected in the vanity mirrors!

Wallpaper in Midwest Living Magazine – Don’t Try This at Home!

While I’m happy to see another magazine promoting wallpaper in a decorating feature, I have to say that there is some abruptly alarming misinformation being passed along in the May/June 2017 issue of Midwest Living. In a story about revamping a home office (pg. 46), the homeowner strayed “from convention, saving time and money by painting directly over the grass-cloth wallpaper.”

Folks, this is a horrible thing to do! You might “save time and money” now, but when it comes time to get that mass of hardened painted fiber off the wall, you will have a dickens of a time, and most likely tear the wall to shreds in the process. $$ to get the wall repaired and intact again.

In addition, and more important for the immediate use, painted grasscloth just looks bad. As a solid color, it lacks the variations of shades that give the material its allure and appeal. Painted grasscloth, especially when painted with a flat finish paint, just looks dead.

Logistically, water-based latex paint is likely to cause the natural grasscloth fibers and its paper backing to absorb moisture and swell, creating bubbles in the material. These bubbles will not disappear when the paint dries. Any hairs or loose grass fibers will get caught in the paint, dry, and harden, usually sticking up at unsightly angles.

Wallpaper in Midwest Living Magazine

the June 2011 issue of Midwest Living (Yes, I’m a little behind on my reading.) has an article about “10 ways to perfect a powder room.” No fewer than four of the ten rooms pictured has wallpaper. Here’s what they have to say:

“Cover the Walls. Overscale wallpaper or bold paint colors work here because of the ‘confined’ wall area. You can make a statement in this room you might be hesitant to make in a larger room. Limited wall space means expensive designer wallpaper … is affordable. You can also safely use grass cloth because there are no worries about moisture.”

Yeaaay! Another design article moving people to decorate with wallpaper. In one of their photos, the pattern was subtle, a tone-on-tone overall damask look. Another was a large scale lattice. A third had very large (football-sized) zebras dancing against a chocolate brown background. All of them looked great.

I totally agree with the statement about daring to do something somewhat wild in a powder room. I call them “Drama Rooms.” They’re easy to live with in small doses, and when you’re not in the room, you simply close the door and the motif does not interfere with the style of the rest of the home.

And it’s amazing how well overscaled patterns work in small spaces.

Ditto the notation about the small space requiring less material, so it’s more affordable to decorate a powder room than a larger room.

I definitly do NOT agree with the comment about using grasscloth or silk or other fabric in a powder room. True, humidity is not an issue because no one will be showering in there. But water splashing on the walls when someone washes his hands or reaches for a towel will – WILL – stain the paper over time. There are faux grasscloth materials that mimic the look of the real stuff, or, another option is to use a sealer to prevent / reduce staining.