ps212 home

All-Weather Wallpaper

For the walls that have everything.

Lisa Marie Hart Current Digital, Home & Design, Real Estate

ps212 home

When the homeowner opened her midcentury casita to the pool and yard, the large walls needed a durable yet dramatic treatment. Enter: outdoor wallpaper from PS212 Home.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAN CHAVKIN

Décor junkies relish — and there’s no shame in it — the particulars behind every home-related purchase. The more exotic the back story, the more necessary the item.

When David Dunn, designer and co-owner of PS212 Home in Palm Springs, told us the showroom now carries Italian wallpaper designed for use in wet environments and the great outdoors, we had to hear more.

“It’s made from woven fiberglass and has a bit of texture to it,” he says of the wallpaper that only recently became available in the United States. “Weather is always a concern here, but they have installed this all over the world. In Siberia, it’s so cold they had to tent the outdoors during installation. It’s also in Dubai, which has a similar climate to ours. So, it can take extreme weather.”

As well as the intense moisture of a shower installation indoors or out.

This is the stuff décor junkies’ dreams are made of.

The confidence the company has in the wallpaper’s resilience is backed by a 10-year warranty against fading. Putting that to the test, Dunn has already coordinated several al fresco wallpaper jobs, including this casita adjacent to the Tony Curtis house in the Movie Colony.

Built in 1960, the home is a Donald Wexler original. The current owner removed two exterior walls, leaving a covered space with an open-air living area and a pool cabana vibe. The pattern she chose for the walls is called Tribal, one of Dunn’s favorites in the collection.

“It’s actually a patchwork of patterns, which to me reads kind of bohemian,” he says. “It reminds me of the patchwork of old Indian bedspreads in the ’70s.” Other patterns span big geometric murals, which produce a similar effect to painting a wall, to those with more intricate detail. “All of them feel perfect for Palm Springs, where so much of what we do is outdoors. I like to think of outdoor spaces as creating rooms, and this way of enlivening a blank wall lends itself to that.”

wallpaper

Some exterior walls require preparation to achieve a smooth work surface, but PS212 works with a specially trained installer who is adept at adapting the paper to almost any architectural situation.

A few clients have been eyeing the showroom’s display for their vacation rentals. As Dunn says, “If you want something Instagrammable, outdoor wallpaper or wallpaper in the shower is definitely going to pop on Instagram.”

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