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Designer wear for the walls

Wall covering lets you dress up your walls even in silk or have customised designs. SANGEETHA UNNITHAN unwraps a new rage.

— Photo: S. Gopakumar

Latest: The wall covering applied at a restaurant of a hotel in Thiruvananthapuram.

The choices in decking up your walls seem to be getting bigger and better. After innovative techniques in wall painting, the latest rage is one that lets you dress up your walls even in silk.

Wall covering, the latest trend in wall décor, offers exciting possibilities to decorate walls with motifs and textures. What is more, you can adorn your walls with wacky themes, such as underwater life.

High-end wall-covering products, made out of textures such as silk, vinyl and Smart Paper, have landed in town. Quite a few hotels, office spaces and residents in the city have donned their walls with this latest offering.

“Typically, wall coverings are used in single wall highlights. But there are also instances of using designer wall coverings even on ceilings,” says V. Sethu, director of Amset Ambience at Vellayambalam, which is retailing wall-covering products of leading companies in the city.

Amset Ambience has installed wall coverings in some leading hotels and a few residences in the city.

“As of now, we do not have Indian companies in the fray. All the wall-covering products we have at Ambience are imported products from companies in the U.S., the U.K. and the Netherlands,” Mr. Sethu says. These include Len-Tex of the U.S., Newmor of the U.K. and Eijffinger of the Netherlands.

The best part of wall coverings is their terrific range in texture, tone, theme and display. Wall coverings basically come in paper, vinyl and fabric bases. Vinyl wall-coverings come in two forms — fabric-backed low-maintenance ones and paper-backed ones ideal for low-traffic areas. Fabric-base coverings include those woven with silk, cotton, linen and polyester.

Wall coverings of leading companies include classic, trendy, retro, natural and the all-time favourite floral design themes. However, wall coverings are not just about creating a theme on your walls. You can emboss them with glass beads, mother-of-pearl and hand-crafted embosses.

“Other than these, there are also more costly wall-coverings with metallic finishes such as gold, silver and platinum. Some also use embossed glass beads and metal tiles. On an average, wall-covering products will cost around Rs.80 a square foot,” Mr. Sethu says.

Special effects

The latest in wall coverings is the cutting-edge digital wall-coverings customised on Smart Paper which allows you to let loose your imagination and bring out-of-the world special-effect pictures into your room. These turn the walls into display screens with life-like images. These wall coverings make use of multiple pictures in a single design. Wall-covering companies are encouraging creation of customised designs, especially for commercial clients.

Other than its visual appeal, wall coverings come with a number of advantages such as low-maintenance, anti-microbial quality and easy-to-apply technology. The stains on wall coverings are easy to clean with a wet cloth or a mild detergent.

“Wall coverings of leading companies are also fire-resistant. Besides, they are easy to maintain and apply. It hardly takes two hours to install a wall covering,” Mr. Sethu says. They also lead to low power consumption as less air-conditioning is needed. Wall coverings are installed using company-prescribed environment- friendly adhesives. Once installed, it is easy to remove and fix on another wall.

“The only disadvantage of paper-based wall coverings is that it is sensitive to dampness. So it is generally advisable not to use them on external walls,” Mr. Sethu says. Most wall-coverings have an average shelf life of 10 years. Amset Ambience is setting up an exclusive studio showroom for wall-coverings at its outlet at Vellayambalam.

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