Eco-Chic Designer Wallpaper

With a low environmental impact and an eye for high design, the eye-catching wallpapers from Mod Green Pod are made without the toxic vinyl coating that has become an industry standard. The Grand Jubilee line, a funky modern interpretation of traditionally woven damask patterns, is silk screened with water-based nontoxic inks. Same goes for the highly detailed Butterfly Jubilee pattern, with butterfly silhouettes against a highly detailed but faint patterned background. Each is available in a variety of colors. All styles are sold in rolls that are 27 inches long and come untrimmed. Custom colors are available. Mod Green Pod also produces fabrics in the same eco-conscious manner.

Graham & Brown, a third generation-owned British company, has offices throughout the world and has specialized in making walls fabulous for over six decades. As a corporation, they've gone to great lengths lately to “green” their operations. For instance, they operate a waste-to-energy plant that transforms the heat emitted by its furnace into reusable energy, and they say that half of every roll of wallpaper comes from recycled materials. The rest is sourced from a specially managed forest in Finland. With the introduction of their Eco Collection, you can rest assured that the earth was treated well while producing the paper you use to treat your walls. The designs range from the geometric to the whimsical to patterns inspired by Victorian parlors, and some were created by talented students at Central St. Martins University in London.

Sweden's Lim and Handtryk produces wallpaper that is old fashioned in both style and production method. The patterns evoke the quarters of Renaissance Kings the parlors of their courtesans, and each roll is is made with an original distemper printing machine, which uses vegetable-based binding agents. (Most conventional wallpapers use synthetic binding agents.) The paper is dried on loop drying machines and the final product is washable. The company creates custom designs via block printing, the primary production method used from the 1400s to the 1800s which involves using flat hand-carved blocks to print one color at a time.