Art Deco wallpaper: how to use it without overdoing it

Art Deco started in 1920s Paris and never quite went away. Right now it's back in force, and wallpaper is the easiest way to bring it home. The look is straight lines, fans, sunbursts and metallic edges, all held together by strict symmetry. It reads as confident rather than fussy, which is why it suits a hallway or a dining room better than a nursery. Here's how to use it in a real house without the whole room turning into a film set.

What actually makes a paper Art Deco

Three things, usually. Geometry first: repeated fans, chevrons, stepped arches and sunburst motifs, anything with a clear ruler-drawn edge. Symmetry second: Deco patterns tend to mirror themselves top to bottom or side to side, so the wall feels ordered rather than busy. Metallic third: gold, silver, bronze or rose gold, printed so the pattern catches the light as you walk past. You don't need all three at once. A quiet geometric in two flat colours is still Deco if the shapes are right.

One wall, or the whole room?

Bold Deco papers earn their keep on a single wall. A chimney breast, the wall behind a bed, the run at the top of the stairs. Put a strong fan print on all four walls of a small room and the pattern starts to close in. In a bigger room with high ceilings, a period house or a wide hall, you can go further, because the pattern has space to breathe. If in doubt, paper one wall and paint the rest in a colour pulled straight out of the design.

Deco can tip into full maximalism quickly, and sometimes that's the point. If you want to push it that way on purpose, we've a whole piece on maximalist wallpaper done tastefully.

Four Art Deco papers we keep coming back to

• Art Deco Black and Gold by Graham & Brown. Gold metallic fans on a black textured ground, the champagne-fountain motif that says Deco before anything else in the room does. 64cm pattern repeat, straight match, paste-the-wall, 0.53m by 10m rolls, around £110 a roll.

• Chrysler by Clarke & Clarke, from the Lusso collection. A fan design built from metallic and matt shapes that give it a slight 3D lift. Small 7.4cm repeat, so less waste than the big-repeat papers, straight match, paste-the-wall, and it comes in rose gold, teal and black as well as white.

• Rene by Graham & Brown. Silver fans laid across a textured navy ground, the darker, quieter cousin of the black and gold. 64cm repeat, straight match, paste-the-wall, around £110 a roll. Good in a dining room you mostly use after dark.

• Florin Gold by Laura Ashley. The gentlest of the four, a pale gold geometric with Deco undertones rather than full theatre. 6cm repeat, straight match, paste-the-wall, around £52 a roll. A sensible first step if the fan prints feel like a lot.

Keeping it tasteful

The trap with Deco is running everything at full volume. One metallic per room is plenty. If the paper has gold in it, keep the other metals in the room gold too, and let the woodwork and textiles stay matt and calm. Deep grounds do a lot of the work: black, ink and navy, forest, oxblood. They make the metallic read as a thin line of light rather than a wall of shine. We've written more about using deep colour on the walls if you want the longer version. Pair a busy fan print with plain everything else, and the room stays a room.

Scale, repeat and ordering

Deco patterns split into two camps for measuring. The small repeats, like Chrysler at 7.4cm or Florin at 6cm, behave like any ordinary paper, so you order much as you would for a plain. The big statement papers, Art Deco and Rene at 64cm, need extra, because every drop has to line up on that long repeat and the offcuts add up. On a full wall you can lose most of a roll to pattern matching alone. Measure the wall, then add for the repeat before you order. Our plain guide to how much wallpaper you need walks through the sums.

The short version

Art Deco is one of those looks that feels harder than it is. Get the geometry and one good metallic right, keep everything around it calm, and a single wall can carry a whole room. You can see the full Art Deco range here, with the pattern repeats and large room-set photos listed on each design, alongside the rest of the wallpaper if you want to compare.