If color drenching is the trendy baby of the family, then consider pattern drenching its timeless, wiser older sister. A design trick oft referred to as ‘à la Française,’ or in the manner of the French, the look found its footing during Louis XIV’s reign, becoming de rigeur thanks to Marie Antoinette at the Petit Trianon and later Joséphine de Beauharnais at Château de Malmaison.
From floor-to-ceiling damask in the 1600s and Toile de Jouy in the late 1700s to Elsie de Wolfe’s treillage in the 20s and Sybil Colefax and John Fowler’s chintzes in the mid-1900s, the “fearlessness of layering a pattern across walls, ceilings, canopy beds, and drapery conjures some of the biggest names in design history,” says San Francisco-based interior designer Ken Fulk.
Fulk used a historic Arts and Crafts-era William Morris Co print on almost every surface in a client’s home library—from the ceiling and drapery to the upholstery and millwork—to make the quaint, tucked away space feel “more expansive and grand,” he says. “I tend to layer busier patterns on larger surfaces that can handle the scale and honor the repeats, like walls, drapes, ceilings—as long as the pattern has the space to shine.”
Birmingham, Alabama-based interior designer Caroline Gidiere says the technique can both bring down the size of an over-scaled bedroom and also make a very small room seem larger by blurring its edges. “When the pattern is all over, it has an effect the opposite of what you might expect,” she explains. “The pattern loses its significance, almost the same as when you do a tonal room. When everything is the same, it’s hard to tell when one thing ends and another begins.” This, of course, also helps camouflage any design challenges, like poor architecture or ho-hum furniture.
She riffed on the sitting room of Lee Radziwill’s iconic Parisian apartment for a client who wanted a next-level sitting room. Gidiere covered “everything in the room that could be covered” in Le Manach’s Mikado, the same fabric used by Radziwill but in a blue colorway versus pink. It took 155 yards of the print to swath the walls, three pairs of drapery, and five pieces of upholstery.
“If you want a room to be iconic, this is a surefire way,” says Gidiere. “It’s likely to always be appreciated by a more refined or elite audience, as there’s a certain pocketbook required to accomplish it. And these are the types of people we look to for influence.”
Take, for example, the Southampton bedroom of Gloria Vanderbilt, a pattern-on-pattern room that, despite being decades old, still feels “fresh and inviting,” says Alexandra Resor, the Charleston-based interior designer of Lee Ann Thornton Interiors.
For a client’s bedroom, Resor installed Raoul’s Madeline print in lavender generously across the room’s drapery, headboard, dust skirt, walls, sofa pillows, and even the outer canopy, using 107 yards in total. The subtle stripe keeps the print from leaning too floral, and Resor ran the pattern vertically to highlight the stripe. Despite using the fabric in nearly every possible application, “it never felt overwhelming,” says the designer. “There’s a serene harmony in the uniformity that’s effortlessly chic.”
While many consider this look a maximalist one, using a single hero fabric requires a “sense of restraint and editing, a deft hand, and a good dose of confidence,” says Houston-based designer Paloma Contreras, who used Brunschwig Fils Les Touches fabric on the canopy bed, tufted chairs, rattan ottoman, and a French antique bench in her personal bedroom. Concurred Boston-based designer Katie Rosenfeld, “In a way, it’s harder than a mix. Lines and shapes are more important or else you have camo.”
For a client with an “awkward” loft space above their primary bedroom–one formerly used as suitcase storage–Chicago-based interior designer Wendy Labrum covered the walls and angle-heavy pitched roofline with the same Kerry Joyce Textiles striped fabric. She even had a daybed made in the stripe. Pro tip? Labrum recommends having any favorite fabric backed for use as wallpaper.
“Pattern-on-pattern decorating has a way of unifying complicated spaces in such a way that the unique features feel intentional,” says Labrum.
In another project, Labrum used an oversized neutral gingham check on the walls, bed, and roman shades in a client’s guest suite to make the “quite small” room feel bigger. She juxtaposed the print with a contemporary Pierre Guariche sconce for contrast.
Seattle-based interior designer Heidi Caillier prefers an all-over pattern in a bedroom. “It creates a cocooning effect, perfect for winding down the day,” she says. The design pro recently decorated a Brooklyn primary with Rosa Bernal’s Sevilla print on the walls, custom-upholstered bed, drapery, and vintage accent chairs to create contrast between the city view outside and the warm environment indoors. “If done right, the effect can be very soothing to the eye while making a real design statement,” says Caillier.
Such is the case in a tented sunroom designed by Chicago-based interior designer Heidi Avedisian. She used 181 yards of Liberty of London linen to cover the room’s walls, tented ceiling, and upholstery. Even though the print is deeply saturated, three walls of floor-to-ceiling windows let sunlight balance the busyness. Black-and-white checkered pavers were left ungrouted to feel gardenlike, and a Soane rattan coffee table and ripple console lend whimsy. “This look generally requires a dive-in approach versus a wade-into-the water,” she says.
The experts agree: Let history repeat itself—again and again.