With throwaway fashion and ever-cheaper and more impressive mobile gadgetry to tempt us, we are after all becoming ever-more demanding, voraciously consuming, consumers. This, according to a January 2014 Conceptual Living report is seeping into interior design. As too in a big way is demand for individualised products, with over 70% of respondents stating it was “important to them to implement their own personal ideas in their homes”, and over half of German respondents identifying individuality of furnishings as being just as important as quality.

For anyone in print, all this should be bringing one all-important word to mind: digital. And for anyone with just a passing interest in interior design – and so an awareness that the mysterious vagaries of what’s ‘in’ have brought wallpaper back firmly into fashion – the words ‘digital wallpaper’ should also be suggested.

The scenario brought to mind, then, will be of consumers changing their wallpaper nearly as often as they change their wardrobes. Marking more of an interior design revolution is the idea that, one day, all consumers will at least consider the option of combining their favourite stock imagery and perhaps photography, to create spaces totally bespoke to them.

But just how far are we along in realising this home decor, digitally printed wallpaper, revolution? 

At the less boundary-breaking, digital-for-short-run, end of things, the revolution is in fact well under way. 

Many traditional wallpaper printing houses are already using a fair amount of digital firepower to complement their longer-run screen printing kit, reports Terence Raghunath, HP’s business development manager for decorative printing and wall coverings.

“A lot of traditional wall covering manufacturers are really starting to grasp this new technology,” he says. “It won’t replace their screen print machines (because those are about £4m per machine). But digital gives them another arrow in their quiver.”

Upping responsiveness

With the Conceptual Living report finding that 65% of consumers in Italy (56% in Russia and 36% in Germany) think more often about home furnishings than they used to, wallpaper printers are, then, getting wise to the fact that wallpaper needs to respond in a more timely manner to passing fashions. Printing reams and reams of one design is after all likely to result in leftover stock where consumers are looking for something more on-trend (and certainly not a design they saw in someone else’s living room a couple of years ago).    

“The trends are constantly changing so you need to update your home or your retail space more often nowadays,” reports interior designer at Spanish product, graphic and interior design company Egue y Seta, Felipe Araujo Torres, of today’s average consumer mentality. “I think it’s happening everywhere: with mobile phones, cars, fashion…”

This short-run market is certainly one the average wide-format printer with digital capabilities could consider getting involved in. Raghunath reports that of HP customers using their machines for wallpaper printing, it’s a pretty even split between traditional wallpaper houses and general wide-format printers adding this as another string to their bows.

“The print companies who have digital kit in-house already and are looking for other applications, are waking up to the fact that printed decorative application is a viable business,” he reports.

For this the printer will probably have to pair with a designer and forge a B2B relationship with a DIY-type outlet to reach the consumer. With a fair few established specialist wallpaper printers to compete with, this may prove easier said than done.

What the wide-format printer might more easily turn their hand to, with much less competition from established wallpaper behemoths, is personalised one-off jobs. 

The sticking point is that this personalised wallpaper dream hasn’t yet quite become reality, despite the right print technology being available now for as long as seven years. Most residential activity has so far consisted of very high-end jobs for those with enough cash to splash on their own designer. 

This illustrates the key obstacle, say personalised-wallpaper-for-all sceptics. Martyn Hicks, formerly co-owner of Screenprint Productions and now founder of wide-format print company Hix Fix, says appetite for digitally printed wallpaper never took off among consumers during his time at Screenprint, largely due to lack of consumer design confidence. 

“This has been around a while but it’s a slow burner,” he says. “I personally don’t think the market for personalised consumer wallpaper is that big, because it’s one of those things that consumers think is a nice idea but never actually go ahead with.”

“Some people just aren’t creative; they can’t make that jump from seeing it on the screen to the wall. They just lose confidence somewhere along the line,” he continues, adding: “The cost scares them a bit too – at around £25/m2, if you’re going to do a wall in your room it’s going to cost £200 to £300.”

Hicks reports that a much better focus for wide-format printers is wallpaper for corporate clients. 

“If they’re personalising the outside of the building by putting signage up there’s no reason they couldn’t be personalising the insides as well,” agrees Rob Goleniowski, business manager, sign and graphics at Roland DG.

Corporate commissions

Mike Freely, managing director at Brentford-based display graphics and signage specialist Octink, can certainly attest to the fact that a growing trend for more frequently changing and individualised spaces is impacting corporate and retail spaces too. 

Corporates are increasingly after something completely unique and perhaps branded, that can also be installed and taken down very quickly and easily, he reports. And here of course, there’s much more chance of the design issue being side stepped, with the customer commissioning their own designer.

“We’ve done a lot of wallpaper work for McDonald’s, Taylor Wimpey, Barratt Homes and St George the property developer recently – they’ve moved away from having a traditional acrylic panel with reverse prints, to full-height images,” he says. “And McDonald’s went quite trendy recently with some abstract full-height wall prints.”

Octink is, however, seriously considering getting into the consumer space too. And there are plenty who would encourage Freely that now is the perfect time.

“It’s a combination of things,” reports HP’s Raghunath. “Timing is on our side – wallpaper is back in fashion. Whereas in the 1990s the paint industry woke up and took over from wallpaper; people then started painting feature walls. And that feature wall has now become wallpaper again.”

Although copyright of images is potentially an issue, packages such as HP WallArt, which includes access to the Fotolia stock library, should hopefully combat this. So too should such packages’ design capabilities, or indeed the design functionalities of the sorts of W2P packages printers might build for themselves, combat consumers’ limited design skills.

Then there are the whole host of design software packages such as CorelDraw and Illustrator that consumers are increasingly using to become more design savvy, and the increasing number of stock image repositories such as iStock and Shutterstock.

“You can now very easily buy high-definition images online and get them printed,” says Dominic Fahy, business group manager, display graphics systems and imaging supplies at Canon UK. “And if you think about the way broadband has developed over the years, using high-definition images is becoming a lot easier.” 

“I think there’s also more availability of substrates,” adds Roland DG’s Goleniowski. “You’ve got prices of materials starting to come down now because higher volumes are making it more affordable for everybody.”

Egue y Seta’s Araujo Torres adds that consumers are now starting to appreciate one of digital print’s key USPs in relation to wallpaper printing: the ability to cheaply fake a material like stone or wood, while also employing digital’s ability to print each sheet slightly differently to avoid a jarringly uniform effect.

“Within the domestic environment people are still reluctant to have printed surfaces because they regard them as being fake. But I think that will change,” he says. “What happened with communication technology, with people not feeling alienated by it because they became really acquainted with the technology, will happen here.” 

The key tipping point, many agree, will come when consumer awareness is really heightened. Then we could reach a stage where, in the words of senior product manager at Epson Europe Richard Barrow, we see “customised print services within major DIY stores”.

Of course for printers to really tap into an apparently growing appetite for easy-to-change, personalised wallpaper, the right frontend platform will be needed to make the consumer’s life designing and ordering the product as easy as possible.

Whether eventually every kid’s room will be designed by them, featuring their favourite characters and a personalised message, remains to be seen. It might well be that printers should stick to corporate wallpaper work, or partnering with established wallpaper producers or retailers to offer the short-run capabilities these traditional houses may still lack.

But it certainly seems the case, in the words of Epson’s Barrow, that “everyone is now recognising the huge potential in the consumer market for bespoke, on-demand decor and wall coverings”. And this, for wide-format printers and five-year-old Peppa Pig fans alike, could be rather exciting.