Hanging Morris Prints in Pairs and Sets of Three

The look in one paragraph

A pair or trio of Morris prints on one wall reads as a deliberate scheme rather than scattered decoration. The V&A holds a set of four Peacock and Dragon curtains, museum number O78905, that were used together in the hall of Morris's own London home, Kelmscott House in Hammersmith. That example shows the principle: repeat a design or its close relatives so the group feels planned, not collected.

The practical translation for prints is simple. Hang two or three framed designs with related pattern density and a shared colour family, spaced evenly, and treat the group as one artwork. The rest of this page covers which designs pair well, how to balance colour, and how to judge scale before you drill.

Choosing designs that sit well together

Pairing works when the designs have something structural in common: similar pattern density, a similar repeat, or a related motif. Here are three documented Morris and Morris and Co. designs, described from museum records, that show the range you are choosing between.

• Flowerpot, designed by William Morris in 1883 for Morris and Co. and printed at Merton Abbey Works, shows vases of flowers within a leafy trellis, according to the V&A, which holds an indigo-discharged, block-printed cotton example, museum number O88654. Its regular trellis structure makes it a natural anchor for a pair.
• Peacock and Dragon, designed by Morris for Morris and Co. in 1878, shows pairs of dragons and peacocks and interlacing floral branches. The V&A notes it was made as heavyweight curtains or a wall covering, so it suits large groupings on big walls.
• Its finer, more geometric foliage contrasts usefully with the larger floral designs above.

You can browse the current range in the full collection of Morris prints to see which designs are available in the formats you need. When choosing a set, hold the descriptions side by side and ask whether the two or three patterns would look related if they hung on the same wallpaper.

A note on the word set. The V&A's pattern book evidence shows Morris and Co. itself published designs in groups, including a pattern book of 23 Morris and Co. patterns that contains the Indian sample. Publishing together is not the same as designing to be hung together, so the judgement of what pairs well remains yours.

Colour and pattern balance

Keep one colour dominant across the pair or trio and let the other colours support it. With two prints, a shared ground colour usually does the work. With three, two prints can share one colour family and the third can carry the accent, provided its scale is similar.

Morris himself responded strongly to colour used at full strength. The quote is recorded by the V&A, and it is a useful benchmark: rich colour across a whole group of patterns can hold together when the tones relate.

If you want to go further, our guide to mixing Morris patterns in detail covers combining several designs in one room, and our guide to wall colours for Morris prints covers the paint behind the frames. Both follow on directly from the rules here.

One more practical rule. Judge the group under the light of the room it will hang in, at the time of day you use the room most. A pair balanced in a bright shop image can fall apart in a north-facing room, where dark grounds merge and only the lightest colours read.

Size, scale and placement

Scale is the reason some pairs work and some do not. The V&A records the repeat of Peacock and Dragon as measuring 109 by 90 centimetres, and describes its massive repeat and dense texture as far closer to northern European sources. The V&A also notes that Morris intended the thick woollen structure to recreate the effect of medieval tapestries. A design with that much pattern in each repeat carries a big wall on its own, and two such designs side by side need space between them.

Translated to framed prints: match the visual weight of the frames to the wall, not to each other alone. Two large, dense designs can flank a fireplace or fill the wall above a sofa, hung with their centres level and a gap of roughly a frame width between them. A large design paired with a much finer one works better stacked or hung at different heights, so the finer design does not read as the weaker sibling.

For sets of three, a horizontal row is the safest arrangement and suits a sofa wall or a landing. A vertical column suits a stairwell or a narrow wall beside a door. In both cases, keep the centre line at eye level for the tallest person who uses the room, and keep the spacing identical between frames; uneven gaps are the most common reason a trio looks accidental.

Height matters as much as width. The documented Peacock and Dragon curtains were made for use as heavyweight curtains or a wall covering, and the surviving set of four was used in a hall, a tall space. If your wall is short, choose designs with smaller repeats or crop-friendly compositions so the pattern is not fighting the frame edge.

What the record does and does not tell us

It is honest to say the historical record gives no general guidance on hanging prints in pairs or sets. No statement from Morris about grouping pictures or textiles appears in the evidence, and the one documented grouped example is the set of four Peacock and Dragon curtains. Everything else on this page is practical method, not recovered history.

Attribution needs care too. The V&A lists the Indian wallpaper with Morris, William as primary maker and designer, but also notes it was possibly designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, so the record does not resolve the question. The V&A further says the pattern is thought to have been adapted from an early 18th-century wallpaper by an unknown designer, whose source was an Indian chintz pattern. When you buy a print by design name, treat the name as a label for the pattern, not always a certainty about its author.

That caution does not change the decorating advice. Whether a design is firmly by Morris or has a contested attribution, what matters for hanging it in a pair is what it looks like: its scale, its colours and its density. Judge those and the group will hold.

A worked example scheme

Here is one concrete arrangement. Take a plain wall above a sofa and hang a pair: Flowerpot on one side, Peacock and Dragon on the other. The vases of flowers within a leafy trellis in Flowerpot give a regular, structured pattern, while the pairs of dragons and peacocks and interlacing floral branches in Peacock and Dragon give a denser, more figurative counterpart. Match the ground colours between the two and keep the frames identical.

To make it a trio, add a third design with a finer pattern, such as the formalised foliate Indian, hung above or between the two larger prints so it reads as a connecting piece. Keep one colour from the first two prints present in the third, and stop there; a fourth frame turns a trio into a gallery wall, which is a different project with different rules.

The historical echo is worth noticing: this scheme borrows its logic from the set of four Peacock and Dragon curtains used in the hall at Kelmscott House, where one strong pattern repeated across a group carried the whole room. Repeating one design across a group is the other reliable route, if your chosen print suits repetition.

For the wider method, our room-by-room system for decorating with Morris prints shows how a chosen pair fits a whole scheme, from textiles to wall colour, so the prints do not have to do all the work alone.