Recreating a Grandmother's Colonial Revival Wallpaper From a Single Family Photo

No Sample, No Roll, One Photograph

In September 2022, Joseph took a call from Shannon Heffington in Tennessee. That afternoon she followed up with a short email and two attachments:

“I am hoping and praying you’ll be able to work with these photos. My mom is looking for more but for now this is all I have. I grew up with this wallpaper being in my grandmother’s home. They tore it all off when she remodeled in the 80s — and to my knowledge, no one has a piece of it.” — Shannon Heffington

Shannon and her family were building a new home in Franklin, just south of Nashville, and she wanted the paper she remembered from her grandmother’s house on the walls of her new dining room, the room where her own family would gather for Thanksgiving and birthdays.

There was no fragment to scan and no roll in an attic. There was only a family photograph with the wallpaper in the background, half hidden behind a cabinet.

The starting point: an old print photograph, out of focus, with most of the repeat hidden behind furniture.

Shannon comes from a printing family herself. She works at Allen Printing, the family-owned Nashville print shop that has been in business since 1931, so she knew exactly how much she was asking of a photograph.

The Pattern

Look closely at the photo and a scene emerges: a Georgian manor with dormers and a tall cupola, a garden urn on a stone pier, broad shade trees, and figures in eighteenth-century dress: ladies in pink and yellow gowns and a young gentleman in a red waistcoat and breeches. It is a Colonial Revival scenic, the “Williamsburg” style of wallpaper that filled American dining rooms in the middle of the twentieth century, when Colonial Williamsburg’s restoration made the look a national favorite.

Patterns like this were printed in enormous runs and then disappeared. Most have no surviving maker’s name, no catalog, and no stock anywhere. That is why searches for “find this wallpaper from a photo” so often dead-end: when a design is long out of print, there is nothing left to find. It has to be recreated.

The Recreation

Redrawn By Hand, From Scratch

I rebuilt the entire design myself, as pure vector artwork in Adobe Illustrator, entirely from scratch. Even enhanced, the photo was still a starting point, not a source file.

The enhanced photo at its real resolution.

No plugin or AI tool can turn a blurry background in an old snapshot into print-ready artwork. Every tree, figure and window had to be redrawn by eye, a few weeks of work alongside my other projects at the studio.

Outline mode reveals the work: every shape drawn by hand, each color kept on its own grouping for matching later.

Side by side, the difference between the source and the new artwork shows how much had to be interpreted: the soft shapes of the photo became crisp, clean outlines ready for print.

Filling In What the Photo Couldn’t Show

Part of the repeat simply wasn’t visible: furniture covered it, and the edges of the photo cut it off. A second reference arrived as a simple phone snapshot of another part of the wall. Where neither photo showed the detail, the rest of the scene became the guide: the same hand, the same trees, the same costume and architecture of the period, so the rebuilt sections read as part of the original rather than invention. This is the same approach we use to rebuild incomplete patterns from damaged fragments.

The hardest section: rebuilt from a phone snapshot and the style of the surrounding scene.

Before committing to the full repeat, Joseph and I sent Shannon a small converted section, a preview of how her photo would translate into print. Her reply came within hours:

“Love it!! Let’s proceed!” — Shannon Heffington

On October 12, the full artwork went to her for review. That evening she wrote back:

“You guys are the absolute best!! I am so blown away by this!!! What a blessing to have found you guys.” — Shannon Heffington

Eight Colors, Chosen From Memory

The finished design separates into eight colors, each on its own layer, which is what makes precise color adjustment possible at the proofing stage.

Usually we match color against a physical original. Here there was no original to match: the photo had shifted with age, and no piece of the paper survived. So instead of measuring, we presented options: one palette extrapolated from the photo and two variants, printed side by side. Shannon chose the second palette, the one that matched her memory of her grandmother’s walls.

Three printed palettes, one taken from the photo and two variants. With no sample to measure, memory was the color standard.

Because there was no surviving original, this wasn’t an archival color match, but the rendering itself was held to the same standard as our most exacting restoration work.

The Press Proofs

We printed the full design at 100% scale on the production material and shipped the press proofs to Tennessee, so Shannon could see the pattern at true size, in her own light, before a single roll was printed.

The first proofs were met with enthusiasm, and the colors were right. But Shannon had one note: the new artwork looked too crisp. The paper she grew up with was softer, the way old prints are. So we printed a set of variations with gradually increasing softness, eight levels in 2% steps, and let her compare them side by side. Joseph’s advice was to show the proofs to as many family members as she could; the people who remember a room are the best judges of it.

Eight levels of softening in 2% increments. Shannon chose the first.

She chose the first, lightest level. Joseph asked her to circle and sign each selection on the proof and email back a photo, so both sides were matching to the same marked-up sheet.

Printing on Nolar

The paper was printed on our Mimaki UCJV300-160 with UV-cured inks, on Nolar, our most popular material: a real paper with a lovely matte texture, moisture resistant, and at 8 oz easy for an installer to hang. Colors pop on it, which suited a scene with this much depth in its greens.

We laid out two options for her walls: ten pre-cut panels at 347 square feet, or three full rolls at 405 square feet.

Shannon went with the rolls, more than twice what the room needed, leaving a generous reserve for repairs or for papering another room someday.

Always order a little more than you think you need. A reserve roll is cheap insurance for a pattern that exists nowhere else.

The Result

In February 2024, a local contractor hung the paper above white wainscoting in the new dining room in Franklin, under a crystal chandelier. A pattern that had been gone since the 1980s, with not one scrap left, was back on the wall for the next generation’s holidays.

The scene wraps the whole room, around the doorways and alongside the built-in glass cabinets.

What This Project Taught Us

• A photo is enough. This was the most challenging reference we’ve worked from, and it still produced a full, seamless repeat.
• Not every client wants crisp. For a remembered pattern, a touch of softness can be what makes it feel right. It pays to proof softer options on antique patterns.
• Period references fill the gaps. Studying Colonial Revival scenics of the era guided every section the photographs couldn’t show.
• Memory is a real color standard. When nothing physical survives, printed palette options let a family choose the colors they remember.

Questions We Hear About Recreating Wallpaper From a Photo

Can you recreate wallpaper from just a photograph? Yes. This whole project began with one blurry print photo and a phone snapshot, with no physical sample at all. A clearer photo makes the work faster, but even a poor one can be enough when the artwork is redrawn by hand. See how we reproduce existing wallpaper designs.

How do I find a wallpaper from a photo? Image searches and wallpaper finders can work for current patterns. For anything long out of print, like most mid-century scenics, there is usually nothing left to buy. Recreation is how you get it back.

How do you choose colors without the original? We print several palette options and let you choose the one that matches your memory or your room. If you do have any physical piece, even a scrap, we can color match against it directly.

What should I send you? Every photo you have: close-ups, wide shots, different rooms, different years. Send what you have rather than waiting for a perfect picture. Our guide to sending samples for restoration covers photos too.

What does my installer get from you? The printed panels and a layout schematic showing where each one goes. Shannon’s was hung by a local contractor working from ours; we recreate and print, and the hanging is theirs.

Bring Back the Wallpaper You Grew Up With

If there’s a pattern from a grandparent’s house, a childhood bedroom or a family photo that you’d give anything to see on a wall again, we can rebuild it, often from nothing more than a picture. Learn how we recreate family wallpaper, or send us your photos and we’ll give you an honest read on what we can bring back.