Set-out and pattern matching

Where does the first drop go? Where the eye goes first. Set-out is the decision, made before any length is cut, about where the pattern will sit in the room and where its joints will fall. It decides whether a motif is centred on the chimney breast or sliced in half, whether the last panel on a wall is a balanced width or a sliver, and whether the lines of a design run true in a room that is not. This guide explains how we approach it, drawn only from jobs on our own record.

Why start from a focal point rather than a corner?

Because the room is seen from its centre, not its corners. At Brown’s Hotel, Mayfair, Adam’s Eden has a 108.5 cm half-drop repeat, and each room was set out from its focal points (chimneypieces, doorcases and bed walls) so the birds and branches fall naturally and the pattern meets the cornice cleanly. In a West London tea house lined with arched mirrors, the repeat was set out from the mirrors rather than from a corner, so the pattern sits centred and symmetrical on each one and the cut edges around the frames fall at the same point on the motif every time.

For a natural weave, the seams land where the wall widths, doors and windows put them, so on a prominent wall the set-out usually starts from the visual centre and the end panels are balanced so that neither is a sliver. A narrow sliver at the end of a wall that could have been balanced is a set-out fault, not a property of the material; the grasscloth guide explains the difference.

How do you keep a pattern straight in a crooked room?

By working to a true vertical, not to the walls. We set out every wall with a laser level; the plumb line is the traditional method, and the laser gives the same true vertical across a whole room at once, including on sloping floors. In a North London house with beams, a built-in desk and old sloping floors, each drop of a bamboo design was set out with care to the laser line, so the stems read as upright even though the room around them is not. Where a design has no repeat to fall back on, or a relief panel must stand dead upright, the laser carries the line from panel to panel: at Masterpiece London a hand-crafted design with no repeat was set out with laser levels so its outlines run from one panel to the next, and at the Castle of Trematon Lincrusta panels were laid out on the table, then hung to a laser line.

What does a pattern match involve?

The match follows the repeat: free, straight or half-drop, or a numbered panel sequence for a scenic. A large or half-drop repeat wastes material at the top of each drop, so the order is larger; the installation cost guide explains why it also takes longer to hang. Whether alternate drops are reversed is a separate instruction from the match, and both belong on the schedule; our designer checklist lists them. Half-drop papers and murals are set out on site, not by a simple roll count.

The match has to hold everywhere, not only across flat joints. At Trematon, pattern matches were carried across corners, chimney breasts and door heads, and digitally printed papers were batch-checked from the roll labels first. In the tea house the feathers were matched drop by drop from the skirting to the ceiling and around the internal corners. A large pattern leaves nowhere to hide: a drop a few millimetres off shows as a break at the seam, and the eye follows the repeat from one end of the room to the other.

What about checks, stripes and geometrics?

They show every fault. At Huntsman, Savile Row, the house’s tweed was printed as a wallpaper; a check on a wall has to run to a true vertical from ceiling to skirting, set by the laser, and level around the room, and meet at every joint and corner, or the eye goes straight to the break. The same discipline carried onto freestanding display boards, each wrapped with the pattern square on every face.

How are murals and gradients hung?

In order. A digital mural is one image cut into drops. At the Everyman cinema in Liverpool, each drop was hung in sequence and matched across the joint from the top of the wall down, because a drop hung out of order, a few millimetres high, or stretched as it is pasted breaks a face or a line at the joint. A gradient has no pattern to hide a join: at the SCP showroom in Pimlico the blue mural was hung in order and butted exactly. Scenic and hand-painted panels follow the maker’s numbered sequence, and are checked dry against the layout before any paste; our hand-painted and murals guide covers them.

What is overlap and splice?

A joint for wide vinyl where the edges must meet exactly. The two edges are hung overlapping, then cut through both layers at once and the offcuts removed. At Oxygen Freejumping, The O2, a fine-line geometric print of white lines on a dark ground was joined this way, because it was the only way to keep each line continuous across the joint.

When does this guide stop being enough?

Set-out depends on the actual room, the actual product and the maker’s instruction for it. A scenic set or a mural made to measure has to be planned before production, and a pronounced pattern on a prominent wall is worth drawing on the elevation before anything is ordered. Send the elevations and product details to our designers page for a first review.