Let your walls do the talking

Florence de Vries’s love of motifs and bold colours is evident throughout her Bellville home. Her secret weapons? Paint and wallpaper.

- Beatrice Moore-Nöthnagel

I’d always dreamt of transforming an everyday space like a dining room into something ‘dégagé’, uninhibited yet elegant. Something light-hearted that shows how much we love laughing around this table. – Florence

DINING ROOM

Florence’s husband Rupert is a botanist – they’re both passionate about indigenous plants. But it was in 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal that she fell in love with tropical motifs.

“That country is tile heaven, with the most beautiful azulejos! But something about the wallpaper in a restaurant called Amelia, which happens to be my daughter’s name, got my heart racing,” says Florence.

“It had an abundance of leaves, monkeys and birds in the most beautiful green, navyblue and mauve. The wallpaper was bold and dramatic and the entire space felt luxurious. I was obsessed.”

The wallpaper in her own dining room, however, was Rupert’s choice. “I was after something a bit more restrained,” says Florence, with a chuckle. “But he said that if we have to have wallpaper, could we please choose something striking! And that’s how we decided on the Jungle Lemur design. The lemurs are so cute and I adore the pink hibiscus.

As a little girl, Florence de Vries marvelled at the colourful wallpaper in her Ouma Joyce’s house in Wellington. And what’s more, it was replaced every year or two!