Wallpaper helps to fake it until you make it

For dingy walls and rooms without a view, there’s a simple fix: wallpaper.

Homeowners have long faked assets like marble and elaborate millwork in a technique known as trompe-l’oeil (French for “deceive the eye”). Artist Louis-Léopold Boilly coined the phrase to describe a painting he exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1800.

But the technique of visual illusion goes back centuries, both in art and decorating.

In interior design, it was employed in homes for the wealthy, as with frescoes of landscapes on the walls of villas in ancient Pompeii. From the Renaissance through the Baroque period, European church ceilings were painted to simulate architectural features and open skies. Beginning in 18th-century Europe, illusionistic wallpaper evoking paneling, tapestry and stone became more accessible outside the aristocracy.

It has come a long way since then.

These days, wallpaper can mimic almost anything. A wallcovering simulating a three-dimensional surface, like a forest, set of columns or wall of bookshelves, can “open up” a space, add character and create the illusion of rich features, said Marie Karlsson, managing and creative director of Cole & Son, a wallpaper and fabric company. Credit advanced printing techniques for this extreme verisimilitude.

“Printing innovation has taken trompe-l’oeil from flat to truly three-dimensional,” Karlsson said. “Advanced digital printing techniques now allow for ultra-high-resolution imagery and layered texture effects. The precision in shadow, grain and tonal depth is essential. It’s what makes viewers reach out to touch the surface to confirm it isn’t real.”

“A consumer ordered a sample and was happy with the crispness of the print and how photorealistic it was but assumed it was a natural grass cloth weave,” he added.

The customer ended up ordering it anyway, Beraze said. To avoid any more confusion, Wallshoppe changed the product name to “Faux Caning.”

Contemporary trompe-l’oeil wallpapers often begin with hand-painted images, which are then scanned and color-separated, a process that can take months, said Pam Marshall, creative director of Patterson Flynn, a division of F. Schumacher & Co., which specializes in fabrics, wallpaper and trim.

“A lot of people have this perception that digital printing is automatic, and you just scan and print,” she said. “You can, but if you do, you can see pixelation.” If you were to zoom in on one small portion of an image, even one as simple as red and green stripes, she said, you’d see specks of green in the red stripes, and vice versa.

With color separation, designers can modify individual areas, like whitening one small patch, without affecting the rest of the design. They can mimic the look and feel of an original watercolor painting, layering colors on top of each other. “There’s no limitation of color and the kind of nuance you can achieve,” Marshall said.

The metallic category has expanded beyond “mirror-y” and “disco ball”-like Mylar to include papers with a higher-end, “slightly more oxidized” look. With these newer metallic substrates, homeowners can impart sheen in a more understated and elegant way, like in a formal dining room.

For a line of scenic mural panels with California artist Colette Cosentino, Schumacher chose a substrate that’s “shimmery and almost looks like pearl or the inside of an oyster shell,” Marshall said. “It’s subtle, not quite iridescent.”

Maximilian P. Sinsteden, a New York City-based interior designer, recently installed landscape mural wallpaper in a client’s windowless bathroom to add depth and create the illusion of more space. Along with dimensional-looking wallpaper, Sinsteden often turns to other trompe-l’oeil techniques, like faux painting.

In his office, he had the walls painted to resemble Barkskin — a wallcovering made by hand-pounding tree bark — and the wood floors painted to simulate terrazzo.

Nathan Turner, a California-based designer, collaborated with Wallshoppe on wallpapers inspired by his childhood on a California cattle ranch. Based on horse blankets and other vintage textiles in his personal collection, the patterns are printed on natural grasscloth. By using this material, Beraze said, “prints take on a new life because it’s like layering texture on texture.” When you install these wallpapers, he added, “it looks like you’ve wrapped the room in textiles.”

Wide-format digital printers have also broadened the possibilities. Before these machines were used for wallpaper, wallpaper patterns needed to be small and repeatable, Marshall said. Now, they can be large-scale scenes with no repeats, for a more realistic and transporting feel.

“Having no limitations with size opens a whole new world with trompe-l’oeil,” Marshall said. “You can do larger scale and incorporate the look of architectural reliefs. It does not have to be this tiled repeated pattern.”

For even more realism, printers can employ haptic printing, producing patterns with raised areas of ink to simulate surfaces like low-relief plaster walls or linen weaves.