What is a wallpaper company all about? Meet Italian wall decor brand Tecnografica

Scouting, researching, drawing, erasing, rendering, printing, gluing, fixing: there are many phases behind the application of wallpaper decorations.

The beginning of the story of wallpapers dates back to more than 2000 years ago, taking place in the far eastern lands, during the Qin dynasty in China. A technique that gets slowly adopted throughout Europe and the rest of the world also integrated to contribute to thermal insulation besides the decorative purposes. 

The most dated fragment of printed wallpaper preserved in the old continent is by Hugo Goes of York, currently in Christ’s College Cambridge and dating back to 1509. But before getting to printing, for hundreds of years wallpapers were directly hand-painted with unique motives and patterns, like French painter Jean Bourdichon did in 1481, painting 50 rolls of papers for Louis XI with unique decorations over a light blue background.

Getting to the present time, wallpapers count all sorts of applications and realizations, integrating among different styles in interior design thanks to their versatility in terms of aesthetics and the much-appreciated reversibility of their application.

Wallpaper decorations: the story of Tecnografica

DesignWanted partnered up with North-Italian wallcovering specialized company Tecnografica to guide you through the world of wall decoration and discover a few secrets behind the production and the application of this widely appreciated decor element.

Built on the passion for graphic design and freehand drawing, Tecnografica is founded in 1992 by Paolo Lamberti with the mission to deliver the best graphics to the ceramics industry through an innovative combination of technology and visual design.

Chasing transformation and evolution, exploring new grounds and refusing to settle down, Tecnografica opens to the world of wallpapers and wallcoverings in 2014, leveraging on the extensive know-how of the company on graphic production, surface design, and decorative materials.

With a large creative division made of over 40 designers, Tecnografica uncovered an original approach to wallpaper production using technology to develop traditional hand-made illustration and graphic design techniques.

Starting from paper sketches and cut-outs, pencil drawings or watercolors, the skilled creatives develop wallpaper designs, very often beginning with a hand-made first step.

Later on, technical drawing software comes into the picture to digitalize the creations, which are edited and reworked through computer screens and graphic tablets.

The company constantly releases new wallpapers collections leading a continuous and deep trend research concerning aesthetics, social tendencies, and innovation in materials.

Often times, a new pattern is born from a close-up picture of a repurposed material used as a canvas from the designer to draw on.

The contaminations with the creative world are borderless, involving international designers, architects and even cartoonists. As a matter of fact, the founder of Tecnografica Paolo Lamberti began his career as a cartoonist and the spirit is kept at heart by the company with the current Creative Director Marco Fontana coming from the same background and affecting the company’s identity and lively, inventive vision.

With its motto being “Tecnografica looks ahead” the company never stops its research to develop new collections, products and materials, currently counting 6 finishes for wallpapers, among which we find the fully sustainable Natural, made of 100% cellulose fiber, eliminating the use of environment-dangerous substances such as PVC, glues or inks.

Nurturing an ever-growing global exposure, Tecnografica operates internationally with Italy and Europe representing the main markets and currently developing across the US and South America. The wallcoverings find applications in all sorts of interiors, from private residences to hotels, restaurants and bars, office spaces and even hospitals.

Even though Tecnografica’s wallpaper decorations suit a wide variety of tastes and aesthetics, the design team is ready to provide customization services to please any kind of request and suit all sorts of interior style.

Starting from the client’s needs, different options of personalization are available, from the editing of an existing pattern or drawing to tweak some details or adjust the coloring scheme, to the creation of a completely new design basing on the creative brief, which might involve using a specifically requested image or following a style indication.

Beyond traditional wallpaper design and production, the company also presents a range of decorative panels, an innovative and upmarket interior design feature. The panels come with different finishes options, including back-lit support, and extremely high definition print quality spanning across classy and modern subjects.

With these premises, in the following weeks, we will explore the world of wallpaper decorations and wallcoverings through Tecnografica, discovering some of their realizations and installations, their interpretations of the main trends in interior design, and, besides wallpapers, the application of decorative panels in interior design.