From Post-War Scarcity to Design Heritage

In the aftermath of the Second World War, when homes across Britain bore the marks of austerity, two friends in Blackburn, Lancashire, sought to bring colour back to the walls. Harold Graham and Henry Brown salvaged surplus metallic paper, set up simple embossing and printing machinery, and began producing wallpaper that offered hope as much as decoration.

The year was 1946, and Graham & Brown was born.

What began as an act of post-war resilience soon grew into one of the most respected names in British interiors - a brand still family-run today, still committed to craftsmanship, and still producing designs just miles from where it all started.

Designs That Feel Alive

Fast forward nearly 80 years, and Graham & Brown has expanded far beyond wallpaper. Their portfolio includes:

• Wallpapers often hand-drawn or painted in the studio before being digitally rendered.
• Paint ranges - curated to complement wallpaper collections, with each pattern paired to four harmonious or contrasting shades.
• Wall art, murals, and soft furnishings -creating an entire design language under one roof.

Collections such as Glasshouse (a celebration of lush botanicals) or Bodenham (evoking woodland calm) reveal the in-house team’s ability to capture both artistry and atmosphere. Every piece feels like more than a product: it’s a vignette, a conversation starter, a way of shaping how a home breathes. Graham & Brown responds to currents not by chasing them, but by interpreting them with restraint and grace. The result is a catalogue that feels modern yet never hostage to the season.

“This isn’t commerce. It’s conversation.

It’s the texture of slow living made tangible.”

Beyond Disposable Trends

The difference is this: Graham & Brown are not in the business of ephemera.

Where fast décor has flooded the market with products designed for instant impact but short-lived relevance, Graham & Brown designs are intended to endure. Their wallpapers and paints age with homes, evolving alongside the families and lives they surround.

This emphasis on longevity over landfill sets them apart. Its why homes adorned with their patterns look as confident five years later as they do on the day the wallpaper is hung.

This isn’t commerce. It’s conversation. It’s the texture of slow living made tangible - a wall that whispers rather than shouts, or a sip you savour rather than gulp mindlessly.

Graham & Brown offers more than decoration. It offers coherency, a language of pattern and paint that understands nuance. We wish them every success with their new flagship, so you can explore their beautiful collections.

For this will not just be a store, it will be a salon for the quietly curious, the patient, those who believe that home is something you shape with artistry.

A Flagship Approaches

Graham & Brown has chosen 187 Kings Road as the home for its very first London flagship showroom - a place where wallpaper, paint, texture, and pattern will no longer live only in catalogues or samples but instead in full, tangible scale. When the doors open on Wednesday, 17th September, the space will represent more than a store. It will stand as an invitation: to step inside a carefully composed world where design heritage meets modern imagination, and where a family business that began in Blackburn nearly eighty years ago lays down fresh roots in the capital.

Textures of Trust: Graham & Brown and Hildon Water

Let me conclude by considering something; for how often do our favourite brands become stories? We resonate with them not only for the beauty they bring, but the ethos they embody. And this is why Hildon were delighted to support Graham & Browns store opening. Hildon, like Graham & Brown, is marked by purity, provenance, and calm commitment to place. Both brands ask you to slow down. To choose, with intention. To treasure what you bring into your home, whether it’s the soft glow of a paper pattern or the crystalline hush of mineral water poured from glass.