The Outdoor Garden Staple Redefining Interior Spaces
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We're so often trying to find unique, stylish ways to bring the inside out, with our outdoor TVs, chic patio furniture, and elegant outdoor rugs, but what about bringing the outside in? Sure, you could fill your home with plants, but if you're not really a fan of that look or don't have a green thumb (though we have suggestions for that), a more traditional option is incorporating a trellis in your interior space.
Trellis, lattice, treillage—however you refer to these grid-like structures, you've likely seen them in stylish gardens and backyards before, probably with vines growing up the length of them. The word "treillage" is French in origin, and according to the National Gallery of Art, trellis-work has been used in outdoor spaces since the 16th century. While it's difficult to know when exactly people started bringing their trellises indoors, in 1862, William Morris's first wallpaper design featured a gorgeous rose bush pattern climbing up a classic trellis. So we can safely assume that the lattice look has been desired in the interior space since the 19th century.
However, one thing for certain is that the trellis is headed back into the mainstream. "I definitely think it's on the rise," Claire Staszak, owner of interior design firm Centered by Design, agrees. As seen in both our 2023 Whole Home (in part due to Staszak) and even more recently at the Kips Bay Palm Beach Show House, it's clear that these traditional garden decorations are once again getting the love they deserve in the interior space.
Why Are Trellises Having a Moment?
The trellis is a very timeless design feature, and due to its outdoor origins, it generally brings a warmer weather, sunny day vibe with it. With all the recent trends and reemerging decorative features—like the circus stripe—leaning more maximalist in style, it looks like we're moving away from the Marie Kondo-esque minimalism, and Jenna Gross of Colordrunk Designs has a hunch as to why: the pandemic. "Nobody wants to be stuck in a clean, white box 24/7. People want their homes to be engaging, interesting. They want layers and pattern and color. Trellis work can be a really creative way to add all of these things to your walls or ceiling," she explains. Like Staszak, Gross also redesigned a room in our 2023 Whole Home that included trellis in the interior.
—Jenna Gross
Traditional interior styles have more heft to them, and the interior lattice decoration falls into that general design category. "Traditional is kind of back, traditional is not a bad word anymore," Staszak says. "I feel like a lot of people come to me for a traditional, transitional look, and so I think trellis is a part of that." Rather than the modern farmhouse aesthetic many people flocked to for the past fifteen years or so, a lot more are now returning to these older styles and details in a more modern way, bringing them, in a sense, back to life. Staszak brings up wall panelling as another example of this. "For so long, there have been all these articles about adding wall paneling to your plain dining room, for example, and now it's going to be, 'Add trellis to your dining room.' I think it's just an evolution of traditional design coming back."
This has been happening in little spurts throughout the last roughly five years, where different aspects of traditional design suddenly get a spotlight. Grandmillennial, one of our favorite House Beautiful terms, perfectly encapsulates the traditional mixing with the modern. "There is a grandmillennial trend that has been happening in the design world for the past several years, and that has opened the door to all sorts of 'old fashioned' design elements coming back," Gross says. "People are craving more in their homes—the whole clean, white space aesthetic is falling away."
Staszak predicts this modernization of the trellis trend will occur in more vibrant, less "southern" ways as time goes on. "I think people kind of want to see these fresh new ways of doing trellis, which is part of why I painted the trellis yellow in the [Whole Home] show house because it's like, everybody's seen green trellis, but nobody's really seen bright yellow trellis."
How to Decorate Your Space With Trellises
Because the use of treillage traditionally brings forth feelings of spring and summer, both designers feel like the best place to put them in your home is a sunny room, preferably one that overlooks a garden. "I do think they are best used in spaces that evoke or reflect the outdoors, and would look right at home in any space that overlooks gardens, greenery, forests, or an exterior water feature or body of water," Gross says. While you could bring in a more wintery vibe by using a darker wood tone for the trellis, this is one decoration you'd likely wish to avoid putting in a dark room to prevent it feeling too heavy.
—Claire Staszak
When it comes to where to put trellises in your room, you have more options than you might think. Hanging lattice on your walls and ceiling is the obvious answer, but even in that, there are so many ways to layer them, paint them, and trim them. "You could maybe create some sort of decorative panel with trellis if you didn't want to put it all over your room," Staszak suggests. "It definitely can be how you play with the painting of not only the trellis, but the wall behind the trellis. So what feels really fresh is when you paint the wall a color, but the trellis is white. I think that's a more modern take on it."
If you are putting trellis on your walls or ceiling, you can easily use a glue or small finishing nails to keep it upright if your material is lightweight. With a heavier material though, Gross suggests using "screws and glue or epoxy of some sort."
However, if the wall and ceiling look isn't for you, don't fret: There are other ways to add the garden effect indoors. Staszak suggests incorporating them on your cabinet fronts—not necessarily your kitchen cabinets, but a larger one more like a hutch. One of Gross's favorite ways to add in a lattice detail is by using one as a room divider. "These dividers let light through and keep the space feeling open while maintaining each as a different area of the space," she says, having incorporated that look in her Chicago show house.
The best part is, you don't even need actual trellis to follow in this trend: Like William Morris did in 1862, wallpaper and other wallcoverings with a lattice pattern exist for you to take full advantage. Interior designer Charlotte Lucas used a custom-colored trellis wallcovering in her clients' pool house to complement the greenery peeking in from the windows, which you can see in the photo above. Staszak even has her own wallpaper collection coming out soon with a trellis pattern on a few options. "This can just allow anyone in such an easier way to get the trellis vibe," she says. "It'll feel a little different and a little more artistic than just the actual architectural trellis." The options are there, you just have to invite the lattice inside.
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