Wes Anderson turns 50 next week. Of all the ways you could mark such a momentous event, one stands head and shoulders above all others: you could deck out your entire house in whimsical wallpaper that will make you feel as if you’ve accidentally set foot inside one of Anderson’s films.
The Anderson Aesthetic collection by MuralsWallpaper is campy, meticulously designed wallpapers that are inspired by the set designs of his movies. There’s the Suzy, made up of row upon row of perfectly symmetrical butterflies. There’s the Margot, a headache-inducing tiki-style clash of green leaves and orange tigers. And there’s the Agatha, giving the illusion of slightly drab mid-century wood panelling. Slap any of these on your walls and you too can feel like a dysfunctional white man in the throes of arrested adolescence trapped within a beautiful yet fragile environment that could never exist in the real world.
It’s the perfect birthday present for Anderson, assuming that he already has enough corduroy, obscure chanson albums and antique bakelite telephones. It is so perfect that perhaps the best way to honour all directors is via the medium of wallpaper. As ever, these ideas are mine and mine alone, but I am willing to license them to Big Wallpaper for the appropriate renumeration.
Tim Burton
Behold the majesty of the Tim Burton wallpaper line, divided neatly into the three eras of his career. The first wallpaper is made of nothing but black-and-white stripes, subtly shifting in perspective to induce sensations of unease. The second is full of dingy, gothic gloom, lending even the most anonymous one-bed, new-build the feeling of decayed grandeur. The third wallpaper is just a lazy crayon drawing of Dumbo with “Will this do?” written underneath.
Terrence Malick
Invite the awe-inspiring power of nature into your house with the Terrence Malick collection. One wallpaper is an extreme closeup of some wheat, another contains a number of leaves quivering tenderly in the knowledge that they will one day be crushed by the almighty violence of the universe. There’s a third, but I can’t remember what it looks like. They all sort of bleed into one.
David Lynch
The perfect wallpaper for anyone who cowers underneath their duvets all day because they’re gripped by an unexplainable fear that their own walls are conspiring to murder them. Try the Blue Velvet, which is so perfectly chintzy and wholesome that you feel suffocated. Or the Inland Empire, full of scuzzy rabbits that stare at you, waiting for their moment to strike. Or the Eraserhead, which vibrates until you wet yourself.
JJ Abrams
Bask in the splendour of the JJ Abrams wallpaper collection, featuring designs such as Off-putting Blue Lens Flare, Off-putting White Lens Flare, Three Separate Instances Of Lens Flare in the Same Frame (Including One Diagonal Flare That Doesn’t Even Have an Identifiable Source) and For God’s Sake Wipe Your Camera. NB: buying this wallpaper means you tacitly agree to let Rian Johnson come along and tear it all down after a couple of months.
Michael Bay
Who knows. I’ve been staring at this wallpaper for an hour now, and I still can’t work out what it is. I think it is supposed to be some kind of robot, but it’s impossible to tell which bits are which. There’s too much going on here for it to make any sort of logical sense, and I’m not really a fan of the way that one of the walls is an extreme closeup of a teenage girl’s barely covered buttocks. And it’s all so noisy. How the hell did they get wallpaper to make noise? This whole thing is a giant mistake.