Cool Tool: Walnut Wallpaper Gallery

OK, it's not really a tool, per se -- but it is a nice website feature.

I'm talking about Walnut Wallpaper's photo gallery, which features various wallpapers the retailer sells (like Cavern Home's Blackbird in the "Kraft" colorway, above) being used in real, live rooms.

So -- unlike those perfectly composed, expertly lit, and professionally styled shots you see on the wallpaper manufacturers' sites or in glossy magazines -- you get a sense of how a particular paper would actually look in the real world: how overpowering or versatile its color might be and how the scale of its pattern works with other objects in the space.

The results, refreshingly, are not always pretty (witness the claustrophobia-inducing Osborne & Little Dusa in Black on Black, above).

It may be just the reality check you need before throwing caution to the wind and papering all four walls plus the ceiling with that over-the-top pattern you've been eying -- or it might give you the courage to take a chance on that pretty paper you've been feeling a bit of trepedition about.

A sampling of images from the gallery:

Timorous Beasties' Thistle in Blue on Dark Blue

Florence Broadhurst's the Cranes

Erica Wakerly's Spiral in Blue & White

Cole & Son's Paradise Tree

Flavor Paper's Dauphine in Black & White

Flavor Paper's Highway 66 in Pomegranate

Florence Broadhurst's Egrets in Black & Charcoal on Cream

Palace Papers' Nevermore in Coral

Florence Broadhurst's Shadow Floral in Turquoise

Flavor Paper's Onda in Nightshades

Cole & Son's Malabar in Black & White

Check out the Walnut Wallpaper Gallery here.