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Royal Poppy Wallpaper Panels and Himalaya Hand-Block fabric on chair, both by Marie-Anne Oudejans for Schumacher, fschumacher.com.

Melanie Acevedo

These Artists’ New Wallpaper Collections Are Instant Statement Makers

For three talented creatives, every wall is a blank canvas.

April 25, 2023

From Mughal-inspired panels to California landscapes to designs fit for a Bloomsbury revival, these decorative painters and designers are expanding their repertoire by creating at-the-ready wallpapers.


Abel Macias

  • Forest Hills wallpaper panels by Abel Macias for Schumacher, fschumacher.com.

    Max Kim-Bee
  • Abel Macias at work painting a mural for the lobby of Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

    Mike Fernandez, Ojosexo Studio

His list of appellations (illustrator, artist, designer, creative director, visual problem-solver) is nearly as long as his résumé of collaborations (Proper Hotels, Lane Crawford, West Elm, and now Schumacher among them), but “I think of myself as a painter first,” says Los Angeles–based Abel Macias. His murals—in the form of street art and graffiti as a young art school grad, now commissioned for interiors by A-list designers—are an ode to his upbringing spent between his native Atlanta and his parents’ homeland of Mexico and now the California landscape, with riffs on Otomí embroidery and cacti-covered hills. “When you paint on a wall instead of a canvas, you have the ability to encompass an environment,” he says. “That’s what draws you in.”


Tess Newall

  • Folk Flower Wallpaper, Folk Flower Lampshade, and handpainted dresser by Tess Newall, tessnewall.com.

    Alun Callender
  • Tess Newall outside her studio in Sussex, England.

    Alun Callender

Setting a scene was Tess Newall’s forte since long before she launched her own collection of wallpaper and homewares: The London- and Sussex-based artist spent her early career in the film industry as a set designer and painter. (The last movie she worked on, fittingly enough, was about the Bloomsbury Group.) Through her husband, furniture maker Alfred Newall, she began painting murals for another buzzy young talent, Beata Heuman; commissions from Kit Kemp and Isabella Worsley followed. Together, they make up their own modern Bloomsbury set, putting a colorful spin on British interiors. “I love the idea that someone will live alongside a mural for years to come,” says Newall (photographed outside of her Sussex studio). “People want to be in spaces that are inspiring and joy-giving!”


Marie-Anne Oudejans

  • Chairs and walls are clad in Poppy Stripe in red, fschumacher.com.

    Melanie Acevedo
  • Marie-Anne Oudejans at home in Jaipur.

If you’ve spent any amount of time on Instagram in the past five years, chances are high that you’ve come across an image (or twenty) of the Bar Palladio in Jaipur. A brightly colored mélange of Mughal opulence and European chic (with a dash of Wes Anderson thrown in for good measure), the scroll-stopping decor is the work of Marie-Anne Oudejans, a Dutch fashion designer (she founded Tocca in the 1990s) turned interiors phenomenon. After moving to Jaipur more than a decade ago, she decorated her apartment at the Hotel Narain Niwas Palace with exuberant murals; friend and hotelier Barbara Miolini was so enthralled that she asked Oudejans to re-create the look at the property’s Bar Palladio. The result (and its offshoots—Caffé Palladio and Villa Palladio) is nothing short of a visual feast.


This story originally appeared in Volume 7 of Frederic. click here to subscribe!