Eco decorating from an interiors expert

If you are looking to refresh your home with the new year, green your decorating with our definitive guide to eco friendly paint, flooring and wallpaper and the all-important finishing touches. Interiors Writer Alexandra Toso shows us the way.

First up, the sticky business of wallpaper.

Not surprisingly, Oliver Heath’s Ecocentric stocks a wide range of eco friendly papers. As well as Graham & Brown’s collection, there’s also the elegant Pavilion Birds, pictured left and this striking Fossil pattern.  The papers use solvent free inks and paper from protected forests. What’s more, for every roll sold, Ecocentric will donate £2 to Friends of The Earth. Wallpaper starts from £29.95 a roll.

Graham & Brown have been going for over 60 years but that doesn’t mean they’re stuck in the past. Last year they challenged design students from Central St Martins to come up with a design for eco wallpaper. The wining design Bitten doesn’t just have an eco theme; it’s printed with water-based inks on FSC approved paper. If you fancy something a little brighter how about this Beauty design, left? It’s also eco friendly and one of 10 designs from Graham & Brown’s in house design team. Papers from the Eco Collection start at £30 a roll.

Known for their fuss free DIY basics, Focus have come up with a collection of plain eco wallpapers in a range of 12 colours. The perfect choice if you’re not keen on using pattern, they also only cost a credit crunch friendly £7.49 per roll. Try teaming them with patterned wallpaper or use them to add colour to the inside of cupboard doors. Their eco credentials are good too; made from FSC paper, the packaging is recyclable as well.

Top tip: Don’t ruin all that hard work of finding eco papers you love by using nasty chemical based paste, earthBorn sells solvent free paste which is free of preservatives and kinder to the environment.

Next page: Organic paint

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