Feature walls are not over – these 25 homes prove it

Simplicity itself – provided you have a spirit level and some patience. We love that this two-tone wall breaks the panelling at an unexpected point.

Pictured: House Beautiful Maura Chaise Sofa at DFS

A simple feature wall solution in the stylish home of Melanie Lissack. Individual slats are readily available from places like B&Q, and can be easily cut to size to fit arches or alcoves.

The joy of a gallery wall is that it lets personality shine. Some are drawn to something neat and uniform, and some love the chaos of a mismatched collage. Either way, it's a feature wall that can continue to evolve as your tastes do.

Pictured: Furniture at Barker & Stonehouse

Stripes make for a great feature wall idea and provide some clever visual trickery too. Vertical stripes make rooms appear taller and ceilings higher, and generally speaking, the larger your space, the wider your stripe should be. Wide stripes lose impact in small spaces, while narrow stripes can be overwhelming in big rooms.

The wallpaper that launched a thousand Instagram posts. Every piece in Sophie Robinson's collection with Harlequin is a ready-made feature wall (see no.14 for the fabulous mural). This is a brilliant one for a country kitchen, in sugary sweet colours and adorned with hand-drawn flowers.

Pictured: Sophie Robinson x Harlequin Woodland Floral Wallpaper

An ombre wall is a really impactful idea if you're decorating with a tight colour palette. This example mutates from a deep ocean blue through to a turquoise and finally a barely there white-blue. But no DIY here; an ombre painted wall is very much one for the experts.

Pictured: House Beautiful Darcy Sofa Bed at DFS

This artistic headboard is chalk painted and continued onto the wall to create a beautiful backdrop. 'Using paint to emulate furniture shapes into 2D on your wall is a fantastic way to make an impactful statement,' says artist Annie Sloan. 'For best results, use the boundaries of your bed and design up from that width.'

Pictured: Paint at Annie Sloan

The joy of a full-length kitchen shelf is that you can pile on crockery, pots, pans and glasses and call it a feature wall...

Pictured: Shelves from Ikea

Create a happy corner of your home where you display your most treasured items for a hit of dopamine whenever you pass by. The magic is in the mix, so add meaningful photos, trinkets from travels abroad, heirlooms, or anything else that sparks joy.

Pictured: Stig Lindberg Bersa Rug at Layered

This pretty display of plates is a totally innovative tool for a living room, and so easy to replicate. Mix and match your plates for a similar impact, and you could dial it up by covering your entire wall in a playful plate display.

Pictured: Plates from Penny Morrison

A panelled effect can be jazzed up using paintwork, like with this dusky pink bedroom using Dulux paints. An orange shade is used on one of the sections to highlight brighter accessories.

Pictured: Paints from Dulux

This is one of our favourites from Sophie Robinson's collection with Harlequin. This fabulous handpainted abstract wallpaper is inspired by the garden in Sophie's countryside home. We'd be tempted to go beyond the single feature wall and wrap a whole room for a cocooning woodland scene.

Pictured: Sophie Robinson In The Woods Wallpaper at Harlequin

Wooden cladding adds a touch of modern farmhouse and is especially useful if you have a contemporary home without interesting architectural detailing.

This is surely one of the simplest feature wall ideas on our list. Curtains don't have to stop at the borders of a window and can instead extend across your walls (taking it behind the bed works wonderfully here) to add a lightweight pleated feature.

Pictured: Bedlinen and accessories at H&M

Make a feature wall with modular shelves and style a curation of books, photographs and decorative objects.

'With the infinite range of combinations available, in timeless materials like walnut, ash and oak, String's shelves open up a whole range of possibilities for a design scheme, so you can make as big a statement as you would like and even create a work of art out of your shelves,' says Bo Hellberg, CMO at String Furniture.

Pictured: Modular shelving at String

Chimney breasts welcome a feature treatment. The rough and organic texture of the Zellige tiles used here feel warm and rustic in an otherwise contemporary space.

Tiles have long been used to introduce colour and pattern to areas of the home that are high traffic, but uses are expanding and becoming more creative. This feature bedroom wall has been covered in brilliant Bert & May tiles in colours and curved shapes that nod to the revival of 70s design influences.

Pictured: Wall tiles at Bert & May

This fabulous cascading wall mural makes the most of the soaring ceilings and eye-catching mouldings in this Victorian home. We love that the colours have been picked up so closely in the adjoining living room to blur the lines from one room to the next.

Pictured: Aula Hummingbird Mural at Wallpaper Direct