Peel and Stick Wallpaper for a Primary Bedroom: How I Chose

Four papers arrived. Two are already out. The two that are left are a question about what direction this room goes in, and only one of them lets the duvet stay.

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A dark ceramic lamp with a cream shade glows beside drawn drapery in a dim bedroom, the papered wall soft behind it.

Last week I put everything for this room on one surface and looked at it together. Almost all of it settled except one.

The paper is the last thing open, and it is the biggest surface in the room. Everything else has to live in front of it. And this is a room shared by two people who do not have the same taste, which turns out to matter more than anything about the paper itself.

All four wallpaper samples together — two beige, a small olive diamond repeat, and a large-scale dark blue and olive floral.

Then four papers arrived

The beige floral and the beige abstract are both perfectly nice papers. Held up next to the olive lamps and the olive drapery they disappeared a bit too much. Not enough pop. In a room where the loudest thing is already a lamp, the wall cannot also be politely quiet.

The two beige papers that were ruled out, side by side — a pale scrolling leaf design beside a warmer beige floral

Which leaves two, and they are not the same decision in two colors

The olive geometric. A small diamond repeat, light, close to neutral. From across the room it reads as texture more than pattern.

The two wallpapers under consideration shown edge to edge — large dark florals on cream beside a small olive diamond lattice with a flower sprig inside each diamond.

The dark blue and olive floral. Large scale, high contrast, the first thing you would see walking in.

You would think the floral is the softer of the two. It is not. It is dark and it is big and it reads as the more masculine paper by a distance.

A lamp stands against a wall in the large-scale dark blue and olive floral, the pattern filling the space behind it.

But it is still a floral. So it is automatically juxtaposed. A feminine motif done in a masculine way, arguing with itself on one wall, which is the whole problem of this room compressed into a single object.

The papered wall runs down to a white baseboard above a wood floor, the small diamond repeat meeting the trim cleanly.

Which is what actually separates them.

Close in at the edge of the papered wall, where the small diamond pattern stops against white trim.

The geometric keeps things separate. A neutral wall, and the flowers go on the bed instead. My husband’s color on the walls, mine on the bedding, both of us in the room.

The floral does it all at once. One thing that is both. And because it settles the whole argument by itself, everything else has to go quiet. The floral duvet comes off and gets replaced with a solid, because two florals that size will not share a room.

A bedside lamp and a small table clock sit in front of patterned bedding, with the quietly papered wall rising behind them.

So it is not really a choice between two papers. It is a choice between keeping the two of us in separate corners, or finding the one thing that feels like the both of us and letting everything else stand down.

That is not a wallpaper question. That is the same question every couple sharing a room ends up answering, usually without saying it out loud.

Where I am leaning

The geometric.

Not because it is the better paper. The dark floral is the better paper, and it would photograph beautifully, and part of me wants it for that reason alone. It is moody and dark and rich. This paper would envelope the room and create a beautiful cozy bedtime ambiance but leaving you with only that one note.

It would also fix this room in one season. Dark and heavy reads as fall and winter, and it would still read that way in June and July. The geometric will allow the bedding to change with the seasons instead. I can change what is on the bed and on the windows in May and the room comes with me.

It is the sustainable choice, allowing for more bedding and drapery options and changes in the future when my spirit moves me to do so. This gives this labor intensive wallpaper more versatility and longevity.

A saw, a level, a laser box, a red cutting guide and a blade laid out on a wood table before the papering begins.

A full roll is not a small purchase and putting it up is a weekend, and regretting something bold three months in is a particular kind of heartbreak. Peel and stick makes changing your mind easier than it used to be, which is a genuine argument for being braver than I am being here. I know that. I am still going with the geometric.