There was just (very, very, briefly) a topic created by a spammer with this subject, “Luxury Wallpaper”. I was disappointed it was spam, because I had something to say on the subject.
I once visited Blithewold mansion in RI. They have this incredible French wallpaper. It’s velvety textured, and very posh.
When the wallpaper needed replacing, the museum was able to go back to the original manufacturers decades later and order the identical pattern.
Then, in the bedroom, they had hand-painted wallpaper. That is, there’s a 360 degree seaside vista all around the walls that was painted on paper elsewhere, then brought in and pasted up on the walls.
I don’t know how much regular wallpaper is supposed to cost. When we remodeled our kitchen, the designer specified wallpaper in a fairly small area, behind the banquette and under some wall cabinets. One roll was enough, $100 (this was in 2011). Then came the quote from the paper hanger – $400 to install. We painted. I still have the roll of wallpaper. It doesn’t look super fancy to me, certainly not flocked or velvety.
One house I lived in had “special” wallpaper in the bathrooms. I don’t know if it would be considered luxury. One of them was mostly gilt, with a pattern of fish and seaweed. The other was pale blue, with textured white clouds and birds. We took it all down.
That reminds me that my grandma had interesting wallpaper in her bathroom. It was white with black drawings on it. The images were of water scenes, and the ones I remember were:
A claw-foot tub
Various fish
A mermaid in a standalone shower which was entirely filled with water
Not luxury by any stretch (it was probably tacky, but I wasn’t sensitive to such things as a child) but I sure wish I could find an image of that wallpaper.
I hate removing wallpaper and I’ve just started renovating my second house full of it. The style I’m removing now was top-of-the-line back in the day. It’s thick, has the feel of corduroy and has the tiny gold threads woven into it.
