Cover-up

Wallpaper has become the new paint, adding style and creativity to homes and businesses alike. Wallpaper has enjoyed a resurgence in the decorating stakes during the past few years, replacing paint as the major wall covering in many contemporary and renovated homes.

Whereas once a feature wall was painted to add impact, home owners are now creating the same effect with a papered wall. Businesses, too, are using paper on their walls, and to great effect with the seemingly endless selection of patterns, textures and colours available.

Wallpaper has improved vastly in quality since it was first used more as a background than a foreground by the Chinese and then the French in the 19th century.

London's Victoria and Albert Museum's short history of wallpaper records the disappearance of many early examples because of their fragility, with history based largely on archived pieces, museum collections, surviving wallpaper in historic buildings, and those papers represented in pictorial records of interiors.

Throughout history, opinion has been divided about wallpaper, with some considering it attractive, clean and durable, whereas others felt it was a cheap imitation of wall coverings such as tapestry, velvet, chintz, silk drapery, linen, wood, masonry or a mural.

By the early 19th century, wallpaper had become commonplace and was the standard decoration in working-class homes, making it less fashionable in wealthier households.

Even today, it has its ups and downs in the interior decorating world, although it is now regarded as a durable fashion, being appreciated as an expensive and luxurious decoration in addition to being a make-do substitute, according to the museum. With the exception of sturdy embossed wall coverings such as Anaglypta, wallpaper is generally an ephemeral material.

Whereas furniture and textiles often survive, and pass from one generation to the next, wallpaper is frequently damaged, covered or removed altogether. It has generally been the easiest and, relatively speaking, the cheapest aspect of interior decoration to replace, and thus it is the least likely to survive. This is unfortunate, because wallpaper is the most eloquent embodiment of changing fashions, vivid evidence of an individual's taste, and the fundamental framework of any new scheme of decoration, according to the museum.