Inside the studio

Maryanne Cartwright

Studio Manager

Paula Taylor

Senior Stylist & Trend Specialist

Jody Hudson

Stylist

At Graham & Brown creating wallpaper is an artisanal process with the human touch at its very heart. Artworks are hand drawn or hand-painted in the Graham & Brown studio by a team of multi-talented surface pattern artists. These artworks can take several days to create, and every creation is carefully archived so it can be drawn upon in the future.

View our full collection of hand drawn animal and bird wallpapers here.

From these artworks, designs are manipulated, coloured and separated, utilising both commercial and specialist software applications.

Completed artworks are then digitised and separated into layers that allow for the design to be manipulated during the printing process. For example, the petals of a floral design might be printed by one cylinder, leaves by another. Multiple colour combinations can be formulated at the point of creation, they may even be re-coloured at a later date to reflect changing tastes in colour.

Colours are mixed by eye from just four base pigments by the Graham & Brown colour experts. Perfect colour vision is essential and is identified using the Munsell vision test, which measures superior colour analysis. It is an art watching someone match the colour of a reference piece in moments from these base materials, their eye for colour, and years of experience.

View our full collection of trees & leaves designs here.

All designs and colours are then tested by “proofing” samples of the design as mini-sections of wallpaper. This can be done using CAD (Computer Aided Design) or via the hand-operated proof presses which replicate the production process on the factory floor.

The wallpaper design is then shared with the production teams in the factory, along with the colour ‘pots’ from which the bulk inks are replicated for the machine’s print run.

View our full wallpaper range to find your next perfect paper.