I have always considered myself a minimalist. I lean toward clean lines, neutral colors, and natural light; I am basically allergic to knickknacks and bric-a-brac; and I take great joy in throwing things out. Decluttering is my love language. So it was a bit of a surprise when I fell head-over-heels for a busy, jungle-esque peel-and-stick wallpaper.
But let me backtrack. My partner and I had just moved in together and we were trying to decide what to do with the yellowish-hued walls in our shared apartment. My previous paint-related endeavors had tended toward white, off-white, gray, and off-gray. My partner wanted a moody blue, or perhaps a rich green. He was going for English country-home vibes; I was thinking Scandinavian seaside.
In the meantime, we lived with our walls. They were kind of cream-colored if you squinted in just the right light, and once we had moved all our furniture in they didn’t look that bad. Months went by, and I started to come around to the idea of a bolder statement for our walls, maybe even a patterned wallpaper.
We finally decided on our entryway as a good testing ground: Relatively small, with multiple doorways, there wasn’t too much wall space to cover. We ordered paint and wallpaper samples, which we could adhere to the walls and see how they looked.
When everything arrived, I was immediately drawn to a pattern called Birds of Paradise. After living with a tiny swatch on our walls for a month or so, I still loved it, and we decided to give it a go.
Buy it: Birds of Paradise Peel & Stick Wallpaper, $90 for 2’ x 8’ roll at Chasing Paper
The lushness of the wallpaper framed our plant-filled bookshelves and created a cozy, study-like vibe. I ended up moving my “desk”—basically a slab of vintage-green marble—into the foyer so that it could be the background for my Zoom calls. It was such a hit, we decided to cover another wall in the room with the same wallpaper and painted the other walls (a gorgeous shade of green) to complement the paper.
Unfortunately, we moved out of that apartment and left our wallpaper for the new tenants, but I’ve since chosen another wildly patterned peel-and-stick wallpaper for a cat-themed playroom in our new home.
Buy it: Cat Cameos Peel & Stick Wallpaper, $69 for 2’ x 12’ roll at Spoonflower
Not into cats or birds? Here are a few more peel-and-stick wallpaper ideas for minimalists who might be maximalists:
- Bahama Palm Peel & Stick Wallpaper, $60 per roll at Tempaper
- Palais de Deco Peel & Stick Wallpaper, from $7 at Walls Need Love
- Flamboyan Peel & Stick Wallpaper, $48 per roll at Tempaper
