Decorating With Willow Bough: Colour Palettes and Room Pairings

The look in one paragraph

The V&A's two specimens of Willow Bough show a foliate pattern of intertwined willow leaves. One specimen, museum number O248728, has the leaves on a white background. The other, museum number O78227, has the leaves green on a pale-blue ground. Those are the two colourways this guide works from. If you want the pattern explained pattern by pattern, we cover Willow Bough in detail on the design page.

What the record establishes about the design

The Victoria and Albert Museum attributes Willow Bough to William Morris, and records that it was printed by Jeffrey & Co. for Morris & Co. and first issued in 1887. The museum also records that the wallpaper was block-printed in distemper colours on paper. Those four facts are the backbone of any styling decision, because they tell you the design was made to sit on a wall, in a repeating pattern, in relatively soft matte colour.

The two specimens survive in the pattern book known as Volume 2, a book of Morris & Co. patterns, and both are inscribed on the back in ink with title, number and price. That inscription is why the colourways, titles and pricing of the design can be described with confidence today. For anything beyond this brief history, the design page is the place to go; this page stays on styling.

Working with the two colourways

The V&A notes that many of Morris's wallpaper designs were based on plant forms he studied at first hand, and that his wallpapers all use repeating patterns built from natural forms. That matters for styling because the leaves are recognisable willow foliage, not abstract ornament, so the greens in the pattern read as plant colour and can be matched to real paints and fabrics.

Each colourway suggests a different room palette. Treat the following as starting points rather than rules.

• White ground: the O248728 specimen shows the leaves against white, so this colourway behaves like a light, leafy neutral. Pull wall paint from the leaf greens and keep trim, ceilings and large furniture white or off-white so the pattern does the work.
• Pale-blue ground: the O78227 specimen shows green leaves on pale blue, so this colourway carries a cooler scheme. Soft furnishings in the same pale blue, plus greens pulled from the leaves, hold the room together without competing.
• Either colourway: because the pattern is a repeating leaf design, it pairs best with plain neighbours. Repeat the greens at least once elsewhere in the room, in a cushion, a throw or a lamp base, so the print does not look isolated.

Colour and pattern balance

The balance rule is simple: one strong leaf pattern, everything else quiet. Give Willow Bough a plain wall, plain curtains and plain upholstery, then draw one or two supporting colours from the pattern itself, the leaf greens and the pale-blue ground. Because the V&A describes the design as a repeating pattern based on natural forms, it holds up as a single focal feature without help from other patterns.

If you are planning a whole room rather than a single wall, our room-by-room system for decorating with Morris prints sets out the same sequence: choose the design first, extract its colours, then build the room around them. Willow Bough follows that system well because its palette is naturally limited to greens on two light grounds.

Size, scale and placement

Willow Bough was designed as wallpaper, so the pattern is built to repeat across a surface. When you use it as a framed print instead, the safest placement is a single piece or a small group treated as one focal area, with the surrounding wall, floor and large furnishings plain. That lets the repeating leaves read as a feature rather than a crowd.

A note on formats: no store format or size information for this page's products was available when this guide was written, so the advice here stays general. Check the current listings in our all products collection for the exact sizes and framing options on offer before you plan a wall.

Choosing a print: one example, described carefully

One print in the collection, the pale green willow leaf print, shows what to look for when choosing a leaf pattern of this kind. It is a Morris-attributed work whose design name has not been identified, so we describe it by appearance only: pale green leaves on a light ground, in the manner of the V&A's documented colourways. Look at two things when you assess any print like it, the direction the leaves flow across the sheet and the tone of the ground behind them. Flowing leaves suit vertical placements such as a hallway; a calmer, denser arrangement suits a wide wall above a sofa. You can browse it alongside the rest of the collection, including the pale green willow leaf print itself.

A note on the record: dates and place

One date in the record is worth flagging. The V&A records 'Willow Bough' as first issued in 1887, and both surviving specimens belong to 'Volume 2', a pattern book of Morris & Co. patterns. If you are citing the pattern book itself, check the museum's current records rather than any single description.

Example room schemes

The schemes below apply the two colourways and the balance rules above to three common rooms. Each keeps the pattern to one focal area and repeats its colours once or twice in plain furnishings.

• Living room, white colourway: hang one framed print of the white-ground version above the sofa, paint the walls off-white, and repeat the leaf greens in two cushions and a throw. Keep the rug and curtains plain.
• Bedroom, pale-blue colourway: use the pale-blue-ground version as the single patterned element, with bedding in the same pale blue and lampshades or artwork mats in the leaf green. Plain linen keeps the room restful.
• Hallway, either colourway: a narrow space suits the flowing willow leaves at eye level in a small group of frames. Paint the rest of the hallway a plain tone drawn from the ground colour, white or pale blue, and let the pattern carry the wall.

The V&A states that William Morris designed a number of wallpapers, all with repeating patterns based on natural forms, which is why the same method transfers well. If you want to try it on other designs, read our guide to styling Strawberry Thief, which works from a much busier palette, or more on styling Peacock and Dragon, a large-scale design that demands more empty wall. For a gentler floral, see a closer look at styling Daisy. And because willow leaves appear in more than one Morris design, check more on Willow vs Willow Bough before you buy, so you know which leaf pattern you are actually looking at.