Best feature wall ideas for each room of the house

Keen to make a statement with your interior design, but not sure where to start? Try these feature wall ideas for living rooms, dining rooms, home offices and more.

A feature wall is a super effective way to draw attention to a particular part of the room. They can be vibrant or subtle, creative or traditional – whatever best suits the space.

To help you get started, we’ve gone through loads of our favourite feature wall ideas, tailored to different rooms of the house.

Bedrooms

One of our top bedroom feature wall ideas is bespoke panelled headboards. This is where wall panelling is installed on the wall to frame the bed, making it the focal point of the room. The panelling is easy to install with adhesive or screws. Plus, as they arrive pre-primed, they’re ready to paint in your chosen colour.

If you’d prefer, you could extend the panelling beyond just the headboard to fill the entire wall. It’s worth thinking about the size of the room to decide what would work best.

For example, in a small bedroom, a headboard might fill most of the wall. If so, it could look slightly imbalanced with panelling if there are only little sections of the wall either side of the bed left un-panelled. In cases like this, full-wall panelling can help to add balance and cohesion to the space.

However you choose to apply the panelling, the added textures and patterns help to transform bedroom walls into stand-out features.

Kitchens

While kitchen feature walls can look spectacular, the challenge is ensuring any materials are durable. This is where moisture resistant (MR) wall panels come in.

As they can withstand humidity, MR panels are ideal for kitchens where steam from kettles and boiling pans is a daily occurrence.

If there’s one wall in particular that’s currently a bit too plain, there are a few panelling styles that could help. One example is wainscoting along the bottom third of the wall. This is a gorgeous, elegant design that helps to protect walls from scuffs.

Another option is shaker style. For this, fill the wall with a neat symmetrical design, with panels placed in square formations.

Both of these options are possible with our collection of moisture resistant panelling. 

Dining rooms

When planning dining room feature walls, think about what style you want to achieve. In particular: traditional or contemporary?

Here are some feature wall panelling suggestions for each decor style:

• Traditional – Symmetry is a good shout, such as with shaker style (square formations), wainscoting (vertical lines) or Edwardian style (with decorative mouldings and dado rails).
• Contemporary – Think clean lines and abstract designs. MDF panelling strips can be used to create geometric shapes, as well as chevrons and other similar angular designs.

One of the joys of decorating dining room walls is that you don’t generally need to worry so much about functionality getting in the way of style. Tables and chairs are typically in the centre of the room, giving you a bit more freedom to decorate your feature wall in your chosen style without worrying too much about planning the design around furniture.

Living rooms

In living rooms, the TV wall is often the focal point, with all other furniture (especially sofas) positioned around it to ensure you get the best view of the screen. As such, it’s worth thinking about creating a media wall as the room’s main feature.

We have load of suggestions in our full article on media wall ideas, but here’s a quick overview of some of our top tips:

• Fireplaces can make lovely additions to media walls, especially electric ones to avoid the risk of smoke damaging the TV.
• Soft, ambient lighting around the television can add to the room’s atmosphere.
• When choosing which wall to make the feature, try to avoid getting glare on the screen.
• Factor in cable management to ensure any electronic devices add to (rather than detract from) the feature wall’s design.

If designing a feature wall around a chimney breast, explore ways to make use of the differing wall depths. It could be that, in the parts of the wall that are furthest in on either side of the fireplace, you could build shelving units. This helps both in terms of storage and visual interest.

When deciding colour schemes, a useful way to think about it is by considering the size and feel of the room. In large rooms, bold colours tend to add a cosy, intimate look. In small rooms, however, soft neutrals can help to make rooms more light and airy.

And, for textures, think about the style of the rest of the room’s decor to tie it all together.

If, say, your room is in a traditional style, consider adding mouldings and dado rails to your feature wall in an Edwardian style.

Or, for modern homes, think clean lines and sleek shadows, such as with MDF panelling strips.

Bathrooms

Although the humidity of bathrooms poses interior design challenges, this shouldn’t stop you from installing a stunning feature wall. You just need to be careful which products and materials you use.

With moisture-resistant wall panels, you can add classic and timeless styles to bathrooms without compromising on durability. This includes wainscoting and shaker and a farmhouse shiplap style.

We even have a wall panelling creator tool to allow you to get made-to-measure moisture resistant panelling, cut to the perfect size.

It’s also worth using waterproof paint for your bathroom feature wall for extra protection against moisture.

For more ideas, see the examples on our Instagram.

Home offices

To spruce up your background in work video calls, think about fun, conversation-starting feature walls.

We mentioned geometric walls earlier as a potential dining room feature wall, and these also work well in home offices. Again, MDF panelling strips are great for this, giving you the freedom to create your own custom design across the wall.

It’s also worth thinking about 3D effect panels. We sell some in tile and chevron shapes to help you introduce interesting styles to your decor with minimal effort.

Or, if you’re going for a more minimalist look, consider a slat wall. You can create this style by installing long wooden slats to the wall from floor-to-ceiling.

While you might want to have the feature wall behind where you work for your call backgrounds, this is definitely not your only option. By decorating the wall behind your desktop screen, you’d be able to enjoy the design all day (not just while on a call!).

Now you’ve got some top feature wall ideas, check out our panelling sale for all the best deals.