DECORATING : Novelty Prints Offer a Lively Way to Change a Room’s Mood

When you want to wake up a sleepy room, consider an eye-opening novelty print fabric for a table skirt, throw cushions, slipcover or window treatment.

Novelty prints, or conversational prints, although easily recognized, are what you least expect: lip prints on the bed sheets, for example. They offer a relatively inexpensive and quick way to add personal style. But beware. Their message can get old fast.

Years ago, novelty prints were considered too casual and were shunned by top-of-the-line designers. Now they are quite fashionable, and there are a lot to choose from in the tonier fabric and decorating shops. They are also popular mass-market items.

Licensed motifs offer one form of novelty fabrics. Pro sports logos such for NFL teams and cartoon prints such as Mickey Mouse come to mind. There are more subtle patterns too.

New to the market, for instance, are Fiestaware pattern table linens, chair pads and pillows from Dakotah. These are fabrics printed with Fiestaware plates, either in the brights the dinnerware was made in from 1936 to 1973, or pastels, as in more recent issues. Prices range from $4 to $20.

If you’re looking for something more formal, there are historical prints. Ancient ruins and motifs such as Greek urns, Roman emperors’ heads and Renaissance statues decorate fabrics designed by a couple of Londoners, Sue Timney and Grahame Fowler. The fabrics start at about $40 a yard to the trade. They are marketed by Ramm, Son & Crocker of London through Beacon Hill showrooms in the United States.

“Specialty fabrics give rooms originality, style and personality together with a focal point,” Timney says. “The fabric dictates the mood of the room. This reverses the more usual situation in which the fabric is an accessory to the furniture.”

Motifs that are large enough can be cut out and glued on to walls, decorative screens or other surfaces for a special touch.

If you don’t want to face a major redo when your novelty fabric ceases to amuse, consider conversational prints in small doses, such as in an unconstructed slipcover on a dining chair, a cushion cover or a table skirt. These projects are quick and easy, and the fabric is readily replaced when you tire of it.

But wherever you put it, make sure your conversational print makes a statement.

“I would do a whole chair or all the pillows, not just one pillow, because too little won’t be noticed,” designer Nina Campbell says. “Don’t lose your nerve, and don’t ask your girlfriend. Just do it.”

Campbell, who has an international design and home furnishings business based in London, recently used a novelty fabric in a big way to brighten a library for a New York client. The room was filled with what she calls serious antique furniture, and all but the top quarter of the walls were filled with built-in dark wood bookcases.

“I found a deep red fabric with crazy animals and used it all the way around the room to fill the space between the bookcases and the ceiling and then did curtains to match,” Campbell says. “Suddenly, this dark room developed a personality. It became funny and charming.”

When possible, Campbell likes to pull a real object depicted in the print and use it somewhere in the room.

A number of fabrics are printed with patterns of famous china such as Mintonware. In that case, she would find the plate and use it as an accent piece.

Her own fabric called Coromandel features stylized animals such as rabbits, monkeys and camels. Figurines of such animals are often seen in antiques shops and could be used as accessories.

Coromandel, which is marketed by Osborne & Little of New York, is available through designers.

Dakotah: (800) 325-6824.

For local sources of Timney-Fowler fabrics, call (800) 756-7266.