Your gorgeous showroom is not far from us in beautiful Bath. Apart from being a rather magical place to live, when did you know it was the right spot for your business?

Bath has always felt like home to me – I actually grew up here – so the idea of bringing Divine Savages back to the city was always quietly bubbling away in the background. When we found the space on Margarets Buildings, tucked between the Royal Crescent and The Circus, it just clicked. It has this wonderfully historic, almost theatrical setting that felt perfectly in tune with our love of drama and decorative detail. Opening our first showroom and working studio here felt like a real milestone for the brand – a place where people could step into the Divine Savages world rather than just see it on a screen.

Not only are your wallpapers wonderful to look at, but they are exceptionally crafted. Like yourselves, we value the traditions of British manufacturing. Can you tell us more about how your designs are printed and made?

Craft is absolutely at the heart of what we do. All of our wallpapers and fabrics are designed by us in-house and manufactured here in the UK, in small batches, which means we can work closely with our printers and keep a real eye on quality and detail.

A lot of our newer designs are printed on our eco non-woven base – it’s a high-quality substrate made predominantly from renewable fibres, including FSC®-certified cellulose and plant-derived PLA, so it has a much lower environmental impact than traditional non-woven papers. We use water-based, low-VOC inks, whether that’s via traditional flexographic printing for those lovely fibrous, textured finishes, or digital printing when we want to capture incredibly fine detail and rich, layered colour.

Our fabrics follow the same philosophy: we’ve moved to recycled velvet, for example, where each metre reuses plastic bottles, and our linen/cotton bases are natural, durable and made in the British Isles. It’s about marrying old-school craftsmanship with the best of modern, eco-conscious production.

We were delighted when you chose to feature our Brooke Plug-in Wall Lights in your cinema room. This cosy space is packed with curious memorabilia and collectibles. These vintage treasures in your day-to-day must spark inspiration in your work?

Absolutely – we’re total magpies. The cinema room is full of old movie posters, puppets, toys, bits of theatre ephemera and general “oddities” we’ve collected over the years. Every object has a story, and those stories often seep into our designs – sometimes it’s a colour palette inspired by a faded record sleeve, sometimes it’s a motif taken from a tiny detail on a piece of vintage glassware.

Your Brooke plug-in wall lights were the perfect finishing touch in there; they cast this beautifully soft, layered light over all that memorabilia, which adds to the sense of cosy, nostalgic escapism we wanted for the room – like being in a tiny, private picture palace.

There’s obviously an antique quality to your designs too. Beyond your personal collections, where else do you seek ideas for new patterns and colours?

We’re constantly rummaging through the past for inspiration. We love trawling museum archives, old botanical and zoological illustrations, vintage fashion, Art Deco cinemas, Deco and mid-century barware – anything with a strong sense of character and history. Our collaborations with the Natural History Museum are a good example: we spent hours poring over their collections to build patterns that feel like modern love letters to those incredible archives.

Travel also plays a big role – a wrought-iron balcony, a tiled floor or a fading shop sign can all spark an idea. And then there’s the natural world, which we return to again and again for colour, movement and pattern: exotic birds, jungle foliage, big blousy florals… all filtered through that slightly eccentric Divine Savages lens.

When crafting a new motif or colourway, do you sometimes have a particular room in mind for the design?

Very often, yes. Sometimes a design starts with a very specific brief in our heads – “this needs to be the ultimate powder room paper” or “let’s create something that feels like a decadent cocktail lounge after dark.” In those cases, we’re thinking about how the pattern will behave in that space: how it wraps around corners, how it interacts with architectural details, and crucially how it looks in different lighting, from bright daylight to the soft glow of a wall light.

Other times, the motif comes first and tells us where it wants to live. A bold, large-scale repeat might demand a dining room or staircase, whereas something more intricate is perfect for smaller rooms, hallways or ceilings that you want to turn into little pattern-filled jewellery boxes.

For our audience, what's your number one tip for finding the right wallpaper for the home?

Start with what you truly love, not with fear. Ignore the “rules” and trends for a moment and ask yourself which pattern makes your heart leap – if you love looking at it, you won’t tire of living with it.

Then get samples, stick them up and live with them for a few days. See how they look in different lights and at different times of day. And don’t be afraid of going bolder in smaller spaces – a downstairs loo or snug can take a lot more drama than you think, especially when paired with good lighting.

Where does lighting sit in your design priorities? Do you see it as a finishing touch, or is it something you think about from the very beginning?

For us, lighting is never an afterthought – it’s baked in from the start. Pattern, colour and light are all in conversation with one another. A metallic ink or deeply saturated hue will behave completely differently under a warm wall light or a crisp task lamp, so we’re always thinking about how a room will be lit when we choose palettes and scales.

That said, the “jewellery” of a room – beautiful fixtures and shades – absolutely is the finishing touch that brings the whole story together. Your Brooke plug-in wall lights are a perfect example: they add that classic Jim Lawrence elegance but are also incredibly practical, which means we can play with lighting schemes even where hard-wiring would be tricky.
 

What’s next for you both and the business?

There’s always something bubbling away in the Divine Savages cauldron. We’re continuing to expand our collections across wallpaper, fabric, cushions and lampshades, with a big focus on pushing our eco-credentials further – more of our designs are moving onto our eco-wallpaper bases and recycled fabrics, which is really exciting for us.

We’re also loving having the Bath showroom as a hub, so there’ll be more events, collaborations and creative moments happening there – essentially turning it into a living, evolving moodboard for the brand. And beyond that… there are a few dream projects on the horizon that we can’t quite talk about yet, but they definitely involve even more pattern, colour and a dash of mischief.

Finally, some quick-fire questions
What are your top tips for making a house feel like a home?

1. Show your story. Fill your home with things that mean something – art, photos, flea-market finds, kids’ drawings – not just what’s “on trend”.
2. Layer, don’t match. Mix old and new, high and low, shiny and matte. That tension is what makes a space feel lived-in and interesting.
3. Play with pattern and texture. A wallpapered room, a patterned lampshade or a tiled nook instantly adds warmth and personality.
4. Get the lighting right. Multiple light sources at different levels – wall lights, table lamps, maybe a picture light – will always feel cosier than one big overhead glare.


Out of your designs, our personal favourite is Drunken Monkey...what’s yours?
Drunken Monkey is definitely up there – I love that it’s inspired by the “Drunken Monkey” hypothesis, so you’ve got this playful, slightly tipsy narrative of monkeys feasting on nature’s nectar woven into a lush, decorative floral. It feels both joyfully irreverent and quite glamorous, especially in the deeper, moodier colourways.

But if I’m forced to pick just one all-time favourite, Deco Martini in Smokey Gold probably edges it. It was one of our early designs and still feels like the perfect encapsulation of Divine Savages – a little bit Deco, a little bit cocktail hour, and completely unapologetic.