Every Room Deserves William Morris Forest Prints: A Styling Guide

Morris's forest and woodland designs are the moodier cousins of his famous florals. Denser patterns, darker palettes, more visual weight per square centimetre, which is exactly why they need different styling than Strawberry Thief or Pimpernel. Here's how to make yours look intentional in every room of your home.

Before we get into the rooms, one bit of context worth knowing. The Forest tapestry (1887), designed by Morris, Philip Webb, and John Henry Dearle, wove hare, fox, peacock, and lion into a tangle of acanthus leaves. It was made for a wall, not a page. That single fact matters more than you'd think: these designs were engineered to hold a large surface and reward close viewing. Modern William Morris forest prints inherit that DNA, and they behave accordingly.

Living room: making a Morris forest print the centrepiece

Forest prints want to lead. They're too dense to play a supporting role, so treat yours as the anchor and build the room around it.

Above a three-seater sofa, go bigger than you think. A 70x100cm framed print (portrait) or a 100x70cm (landscape) sits properly above a standard 200cm sofa. Anything smaller than 60x80cm will float and look accidental. If you're working with a canvas, the XL 100x150cm size genuinely earns its keep here, because the mirrored edge wrapping keeps the pattern intact rather than cropping off a fox's tail.

Leave 15 to 20cm between the top of the sofa and the bottom of the frame. Any tighter and the print looks like it's resting on the cushions. Any further up and you break the visual connection between art and furniture.

Because forest patterns are already visually busy, the sofa beneath should be plain. A solid velvet in forest green, oxblood, or clay works beautifully. Patterned upholstery underneath a Morris forest print is where rooms start to feel like costume drama sets.

One more thing: lighting. These prints are dark. North-facing walls make them look muddy by late afternoon. If you can't move it, add a warm picture light (2700K, not cool white) or a nearby floor lamp aimed at the wall.

Bedroom: why woodland designs create the calmest sleeping spaces

There's a common assumption that Morris florals are for bedrooms and forest prints are for everywhere else. We disagree. The rhythmic density of a woodland pattern, all those repeated leaves and creatures, has the same visual effect as looking into an actual forest canopy. It's meditative.

Above the bed, size to the width of your headboard. For a standard double (135cm), a single 50x70cm framed print sits centred and calm. For a king (150cm) or super king (180cm), go 70x100cm portrait, or pair two 40x50cm prints side by side with 8cm between them.

Hang so the bottom edge sits 20 to 25cm above the headboard. Bedrooms are the one room where lower placement feels correct, because you're often lying down looking up.

For bedroom walls, we'd steer you towards the greener, less animal-heavy forest designs. A hare or a fox staring at you at 3am is a lot. Leaf-dominant William Morris woodland wall art reads calmer at bedside than the wilder tapestry-derived pieces.

Hallway and landing: first impressions with Arts and Crafts character

Hallways are where forest prints truly come alive. They're often the darkest, narrowest spaces in a house, which is precisely the environment these designs were originally made for. Victorian entrance halls were lined with tapestries and heavy patterned wallpaper for a reason.

For a standard hallway wall (opposite the front door or along a corridor), a single 50x70cm framed print at eye level does more work than three smaller ones scattered about. Centre it 145 to 150cm from the floor to the middle of the print. That's gallery standard and it works.

Landings can take more. If yours has a full wall visible from the stairs, a 70x100cm print or a pair of 50x70cm portraits stacked vertically (with 10cm between them) gives you something to walk up towards.

Hallways also handle darker paint colours brilliantly, which means you can lean into the Arts and Crafts palette without worrying about the room feeling closed in. Farrow & Ball's Studio Green, Little Greene's Invisible Green, or a deep clay like Book Room Red all sing next to Morris forest prints.

Home office and study: the case for nature on your work walls

If you spend eight hours a day looking at a screen, the wall behind or beside your monitor matters. Arts and Crafts forest prints work particularly well in home offices for two reasons: they're detailed enough to reward glances (unlike minimalist prints, which give you nothing after week one), and their earthy palette settles the nervous system in a way that abstract art doesn't.

Position matters. Don't hang a forest print directly behind you on video calls, because the pattern density competes with your face on camera. Instead, put it on the wall you look at when you glance up from work, or on the wall behind your monitor if the print is smaller than the desk width.

Sizes: 40x50cm or 50x70cm framed prints are the sweet spot for above a desk. Anything larger fights the monitor for attention. If you have a wider workspace or bookshelf run, a landscape 60x80cm above the shelves works beautifully.

Studies and libraries handle the more masculine, animal-heavy forest designs better than any other room. Peacocks, hares, foxes, all of it. Pair with dark stained wood shelves and a green banker's lamp and you've built a room with actual character.

Choosing the right frame finish for Morris's earthy palette

Frame choice matters more for forest prints than for florals, because the wrong finish will either wash out the deep greens or clash with the browns. Here's how we'd think about it.

Solid oak (natural or light). The default choice for lighter, greener forest designs. Oak's warm undertones echo the browns in the print without competing. Works in almost any room with plaster walls, wood floors, or warm neutrals.

Walnut (dark). Our favourite for the denser, darker forest prints. The deeper wood tone matches the visual weight of the design, so nothing feels underframed. Particularly good in studies, libraries, and living rooms with darker walls.

Black. The right call when your walls are painted a strong colour (dark green, oxblood, navy) or when the print features high-contrast elements like white flowers or pale birds against the green. Black frames also work if the rest of your art is framed in black, for consistency.

What to avoid. White frames drain the warmth out of Morris's palette and make the print look like a printout. Gold or brass frames tip the whole thing into Victorian pastiche.

All our frames are solid FSC-certified wood, not veneered MDF, which matters for these darker prints because the frame is a substantial visual element rather than a thin border. The UV-protective acrylic glaze also means the deep greens won't fade even on a sunny wall, which is more relevant than people realise for prints with a lot of dark pigment.

Size guide: which dimensions work for which walls

Forest prints need more breathing room than florals because the pattern is denser. As a rule, aim for 15 to 20% more wall space around a Morris forest print than you would around a lighter print of the same size.

Small walls (under 100cm wide). 30x40cm or 40x50cm framed. Ideal for narrow hallway sections, above bedside tables, or beside doorways.

Medium walls (100 to 180cm wide). 50x70cm framed. This is the workhorse size and probably where you should start if you're unsure. Works above desks, single beds, small sofas, and console tables.

Large walls (180 to 250cm wide). 60x80cm or 70x100cm framed. Above three-seater sofas, king beds, or dining sideboards.

Statement walls (250cm+). 70x100cm framed at maximum, or move to canvas at 100x150cm. Above this scale, the mirrored edge wrap on canvas keeps the pattern flowing rather than boxing it in with a frame.

One rule that holds across every size: the print's width should be roughly two-thirds the width of the furniture beneath it. A 60x80cm landscape print (80cm wide) sits perfectly above a 120cm sideboard.

Colour palettes that complement Morris forest greens and browns

Generic "warm neutrals" advice doesn't help when your print features hunter green, burgundy, ochre, and deep brown all at once. Here are specific pairings that actually work.

Walls to paint or wallpaper. For a warm, enveloping room, try Farrow & Ball Setting Plaster (soft pink-clay), Little Greene Rolling Fog (warm grey), or Farrow & Ball Card Room Green for full drama. If you want your Morris forest print to pop against a lighter wall, School House White or Slaked Lime are safer than pure white, which will look cold next to earthy pigments.

Textiles. Oatmeal linen, unbleached calico, chocolate brown wool, and rust or burnt orange velvet all pick up tones already in the print. Avoid true black textiles near the print because they flatten the darker areas.

Metals and wood. Aged brass over chrome. Warm oak, walnut, or elm over pine or cool-toned grey woods. Antique brass door handles, picture rails, and lamp bases pull the whole scheme together.

A green art prints pairing (say, a botanical study of a single fern next to a Morris forest print) creates a satisfying dialogue between simple and complex, provided the greens are in the same family. Test by holding both prints together and checking whether the greens make each other look off. If one goes yellowish and the other blueish, they're not friends.

Mixing Morris forest prints with other wall art (without clashing)

The usual advice is "one Morris per room," which we think is nonsense if you do it thoughtfully. Forest prints can absolutely share walls with other art, but they need the right neighbours.

What works. Vintage botanical illustrations, natural history prints (birds, insects, mushrooms), antique maps, black and white woodland photography, and single-colour ink drawings. Anything with a scholarly, cabinet-of-curiosities feeling.

What also works, surprisingly. One large forest print paired with a single very minimal piece, like a small abstract in ochre or an unframed calligraphic print. The contrast between dense and empty gives the eye a rest.

What to avoid. Other dense pattern prints (including other Morris florals in the same room). Pop art. Anything with cool blues or fluorescent tones. Modern typography prints, which look temporally confused next to Arts and Crafts work.

For gallery walls, treat the Morris forest print as the anchor at roughly 60 to 70% of the total visual weight, then surround it with smaller supporting pieces. Keep frame finishes to a maximum of two (say, walnut and black) or the wall starts to look like a car boot sale. If you're building outward from a Morris centrepiece, our wider botanical art prints selection is a good hunting ground for companion pieces that share the palette without competing.

One question we get often: can you use forest prints year round, or do they feel seasonal? Our view is that they're autumnal in mood but not in season. Deep green and brown are as much a summer forest as a winter one. The only time they feel wrong is in a room styled explicitly for spring, where a Pimpernel or Strawberry Thief will always outperform them.

The takeaway

Forest prints reward commitment. Give them a proper wall, the right frame, and enough breathing space, and they'll do more work than any other piece of art in your house. Undersize them, hang them on a cool white wall in a chrome frame, and they'll look like a mistake. Start with a 50x70cm walnut-framed print on a warm-toned wall and go from there.