Transform your home with wallpaper, panels and paint

Wonder walls: The top classic and trending DIY ideas you can try this season

Acoustic timber wall panels, left, and wallpaper, right, and murals are among ways we can breathe new life into our interiors.

Are you realising the potential of your empty walls? Let’s look at putting them to work with some classic and trending projects.

SLAT FOR SOUND

Vertically slatted wall panelling (sometimes referred to as fluted or routed) is all the rage for 2024, most particularly in kitchens. Developed from our love of wainscoting and moulded panels, wood-style varieties offer a warming biophilic aesthetic and eye-catching texture. This handy slap-it-up solution in wood-plastic-composites is now available as a sound-defeating product. 

Noise transfer is often an issue in older homes featuring slender stud walling with insufficient acoustic batting. Acoustic panels can be applied to the surface of party walls between semi-detached homes and can also be used to reduce noise between rooms anywhere in a house or apartment.

Acoustic timber wall panels include products from Woodies DIY, under the Irish Deanta branding and as Woodlux; fom €90 per sq m. Picture: Deanta

Panelling with a good noise reduction coefficient (NRC) in the area of 0.8 or better is made up of multiple sound-absorbent layers with a felt-style lining. It can be applied to both walls and ceilings (DIY if you’re up to it). It’s a great alternative to double-slabbing and re-skimming — expensive and spatially intrusive. 

My choice is the acoustic wall panels at Woodies DIY in light oak, smoked oak or walnut (2.4m x 600mm per pack), which come in single packs at €99 or two for €190. Woodies offers a very handy installation guide here. For a more rounded, dowel profile try Woodlux board kits from €59.99, tilemerchant.ie.

ROLL ON

Heritage and scale: Styling with wallpaper has an immediacy that’s only matched by paint. Used with a lining paper wallpaper can help to disguise the nuisance of uneven, imperfect walls. There are two leading trends to take note of this year. 

The first is what I call farmhouse-formal, but you might see it under modern-heritage in the look-books. 

Look for vertically inclined papers and stencil patterns to 'lift' low ceilings. The luxury wallpaper Wisteria (shown in Pine) is €134 per roll, Fiona Howard. 

Checks, stripes, and chintz in new colourways and bold repeats are a perfect way into this blend of old and new. It offers nostalgia with a side of cosy charm. 

Look up Cupid’s Beau a new take on Sanderson’s beloved Etchings & Roses, with naughty little insects scattered throughout cascades of blossoms and ribbons. Available in three new colourways, Morel/Mantle, Quince/Chalk, Florin/Madder; €212, wallpaperdirect.com.

Arte’s Les Tricots in velvety soft yarns, from €160 per roll, Renaissance Design Studio.

Large-scale more abstracted papers are trending everywhere and can be used to inject character into jaded spaces with the use of just one wall. 

Push the ceiling back with something vertically inclined, or elbow the walls left and right with a horizontal pattern. I’m wild for Arte’s Les Tricots Chintz, with its densely packed, overlapping tropical leaves taken from the world of haute couture; from €160 per roll, renaissancedesignstudio.ie.

MURAL MAGIC

 We’ve come a long way since Hilda Ogden unveiled her ghastly mountain “Muriel” spiked with ceramic ducks in Coronations Street in 1976. Still, the drama goes on in 2024 with artwork and photography blown up to cloak entire walls. 

Elaborate stencils and digitally printed murals are a fast and completely reversible way to cheer up a wall and scheme a whole room for a relatively small spend. 

Dramatic or meditative, digital products are printed to the exact dimensions you need and carefully installed to appear all but seamless. Best used on one feature wall, take one or even two colours from the content of your mural to finish surrounding walls. This imagery can be used for children’s rooms of course, but don’t confine your imagination to the playroom.

Pink and Grey Meadow, from €49 per square metre, Wall Sauce. 

Prints offer everything from mysterious forests to crystalline geodes and wild abstracts. Suppliers include digitalliving.ie, with prices from €79-€449 for a wall panel. 

Its team advises checking the surface of the wall before starting your project: "If you find cracks and holes we recommend using a wall filler (provided from any local DIY outlet). Smooth out the surface when the filler is dry to achieve the best results.” 

I would add that sugar soap can take off any grease or grot that might interfere with the adhesive. Digital Living offers full instructions for their panels if you want to have a go at hanging the mural yourself; see digitalliving.ie.

BIG CHILL

If your walls are markedly cold to the touch, and any cavity has already been filled, it might be time to consider dry lining to the inside face of the walls to deliver enhanced comfort and savings on your energy bills. 

Cavity fill will always be the first thing to check in the case of cold and condensation in a block build. If you’re not sure if the walls were previously filled, take a look around outside for evenly spaced holes drilled to the base of the wall. Old fill can fail, so don’t discount having the cavities refilled to close off voids. Take the advice of an engineer if in any doubt. 

Wave of Dots wallpaper, €140 per roll, Sorbet Dreams. 

Keep in mind that on its own cavity fill and/or dry lining will not “fix” a chronic damp problem or head off the serious issue of black mould. It’s also not suited to solid stone walls in heritage buildings that need to “breathe”.

Dry lining involves attaching an insulation board to the walls and covering it with a vapour barrier layer and plasterboard. You will have to budget to take out and refit kitchens, cabinets, electrical outlets and appliances. 

Filling a timber frame with additional insulation is a very invasive and costly business — talk to a specialist contractor. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland offers from €700-€1700 grant aid for cavity filling, depending on build type, and €1,500-€4,500 for dry-lining. If you are on certain social welfare payments you may qualify for free deep-renovation improvements under SEAI’s Fully Funded Energy Upgrades; seai.ie.

SUPER STORAGE

Are your idle walls sleeping giants of storage? Sleek and tidy, built-in storage is transformative as it is designed to be highly specific to the space. Well installed, this can overcome any peculiarities of height, corners and walls that are not quite true. You would be amazed what even 30cm depths can do. 

Superb cabinetmaking can advance across rooms in various ways, divide yawning open plan areas or hug lengths of the wall in slender depths of cupboards and shelving. 

The mid-century concept of the storage wall has never been as popular as it is today, especially in kitchens, halls and transition spaces. 

Green paint spruces up any room. File picture

With handle-free bump operation and economical fronts like figured ply (a Dermot Bannon favourite), your storage cabinetry will be delightfully discreet, reading as walling with a few slender seams or historical panelling on show. The built-in pantry (with or without a counter or even a working desk) is the must-have for kitchens in 2024.

Storage walls featuring mainly closing doors can increase wall depth, muffling resonant noise between rooms. Where space is really at a premium, look into sliding, pocket and folding-door to combat that greedy outward swing. 

If your budget only reaches a DIY adventure (say terraces of Ikea Billy or Kallax bookcases) elevate them with the thousands of inspiring hacks on Instagram. Conceal all screws and fixings, and paint cheaper free-standing shelving to match surrounding walls — a sophisticated edge. 

Many larger kitchen and wardrobe suppliers offer storage systems on an MDF carcass that costs a fraction of the price of bespoke joinery. 

Otherwise, talk to your architect or interior designer about tailored banks of storage with varying depths and open and blind storage elements, more commonly seen in kitchens, dressing rooms and utilities. Where you own a period building, for a cohesive pleasing aesthetic, ensure the details to the doors, moulding and pulls reflect to some degree the era of your home.