Behind the Design: New Cailíní Coastal Wallpapers
Hello CC friends! I want to begin by thanking you for your support these past 3 years. Since the early days of CC, it's been a dream of mine to create our own branded product line. Products that are beautiful and quintessentially coastal in their style, distinct and unique in design, and offer exceptional quality. Your support of our small business has allowed that dream to become a reality today, with the introduction of our first-ever Cailíní Coastal-designed wallpaper collection!
(Photo by Darina Todorova)
Our already popular exclusive wallpaper collections with textile designers, Victoria Larson and Kristen Leigh, offer whimsical watercolor designs that truly make artwork for your walls. These collections already encapsulate so much of what we love, and so we wanted this new collection to look completely different.
(Photos by Darina Todorova)
There are a lot of wallpapers on the market and when we sat down to dream up what we wanted this collection to look like, we started by asking what was missing or hard to find. I love the sophisticated look of textured wall coverings, and I really love textured wall coverings with patterns. Every time I have personally found a printed textured wallpaper (whether it be a grasscloth, paper weave, string or another textured ground), I've needed a designer to access it. The process of printing on a textured ground is expensive with less manufacturers capable of doing it. As a result, this luxurious look has remained overwhelmingly exclusive to the trade and their clients...until now!
(Photo by Darina Todorova)
With that, allow me to introduce you to our beautiful new collection, featuring a number of textured coastal wall coverings, no designer required! Read on below to explore each design or get right to it and shop the full collection now.
If you're a coastal lover, you likely share my affinity for stripes. It's a pattern that I have all over my home and in a large portion of my wardrobe. While there are endless ways to iterate on stripe, a striped wallpaper isn't exactly unique, so we gave ours some pizzazz by digitally printing it on grasscloth. The texture adds sophistication to this nautical pattern. This design is fondly named for my youngest daughter, Emmy. Emmy's older sister, Riley, has a very popular namesake wallpaper already with Cailíní Coastal (plug for the Riley Scallop) and it was time for my Emmy girl to get her own. I chose a design that I knew would be a sensation, and this classic stripe offered in 3 color ways (navy, chambray and khaki) was an obvious choice. This wallpaper is arguably the most versatile of the collection making it a perfect addition in nearly any space from a bedroom to a dining room or, even a ceiling!
(Photos by Darina Todorova)
A coastal scene was a non-negotiable for me when it came to designing our first CC collection. Tortola's inspiration came from an antiqued textile we found. It featured whimsical sailboats, palm trees and lighthouses. What I particularly loved about this vintage textile was that the elements within it married the two places I've lived - the palm trees reminding me of California and the lighthouses/sailboats reminding me of New England. Lindsay, our amazing designer, reworked the layout and the colors (thank goodness for the real creative design talent!) to create the Tortola you see today. Tortola is offered on a durable pre-pasted ground, the same ground that our popular collection with Kristen Leigh is on. Since this design felt both appropriate for a bathroom and/or a kid-friendly space, we chose a flat, wipeable material that would be most conducive to those environments, among many others.
(Photos by Darina Todorova)
Over a decade ago I pinned a photo (on Pinterest) of a powder bathroom with fabulous seashell wallpaper. It's remained one of my all-time favorite design images and it served as the inspiration for our Coquillages. I wanted big, bold shells, something that was a little extra, but perfect for a house by the water. We didn't want this wall covering to feel too kitschy coastal so we printed it on grasscloth to elevate the design. Each icon you see began with a hand-painted watercolor illustration by our CC designer, Lindsay. We loved these watercolor icons so much that they are now the cover for our Instagram Story Highlights! Initially this design was intended to be offered in just one colorway – the dusty blue shells on natural – but when we received the strike offs from the mill, one came back as a surprise with the light blue ground with natural shells. Our team loved it so much that we decided to introduce a second colorway. This fun celebration of life under the sea is appropriately named Coquillages which means “seashells” in French.
(Photos by Darina Todorova)
Another must-have of mine for this collection was a hydrangea wallpaper. This iconic summer flower is synonymous with the east coast and is a favorite of mine, as well as so many of our customers. The hydrangea reminds me of childhood summers out East on Long Island. The style out east is more traditional than relaxed, and I was inspired by that style to create a traditional toile, a hydrangea toile. Similar to our Tortola design, Endless Summer Hydrangea began with a vintage document. This time, a black and white sketch that featured fluffy hydrangea heads and wisteria. Lindsay, our designer, created a beautiful color palette of indigo, rich blues and ultra-soft periwinkles. We tried this design on several different textured grounds, but ultimately loved it most on the bright white paper weave. Paper weave is a textured paper that is a bit flatter than grasscloth and has almost a basketweave pattern to it. It’s very unique and, again, something that is extra hard to find as a consumer unless you’re working with a designer. I decided to name it Endless Summer because the hydrangea looked most like the Endless Summer variety, which also happens to be my personal favorite hydrangea!
(Photos by Darina Todorova)
The Natural Grasscloth is the only part of the collection that was not CC designed, but there is a reason we included it. The Natural Grasscloth is the base (or ground, in technical terms) for both of our printed grasscloths (Emmy Stripe and Coquillages). Other than being a beautiful and versatile wallcovering, we decided to include this should you be inspired to use it as an accent to one of our grasscloths. For example, perhaps you want to use the Emmy Stripe or Coquillages in a ensuite bathroom, but it's too bold to bring into the bedroom. This Natural Grasslcoth is the perfect compliment to the bathroom, while offering a more subdued look for a larger space.
(Photos by Darina Todorova)
We are so proud to introduce this collection and we hope you love it as much as we do. We can't wait to see which swatches, and ultimately rolls, you order. Please tag us or DM us photos when you install. We love seeing how you style your CC pieces in your own homes!
Enjoy!
Xo Meg
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