Mirrored Lattice Walls

Interior lattice walls create a garden like ambience in any room.

Admirers of French-style decorating probably know about trellis walls – the decorative wall treatment fashioned from crossed wood strips that applied as panels. Traditionally, lattice or trellis was used to formalize walled gardens or in interior rooms with garden themes. While diamonds and squares are the lattice shapes created by the criss-crossed strips, even more complex shapes such as arches or circles are used. Lattice presents an architectural approach to woodworking.

Trellis is mostly seen outdoors and in sunrooms. So when I came across two wonderful examples in a kitchen, dining room, bathroom and on cabinet panels, it seemed time to note its possibilities as an alternative (though a far more costly one) to bead board. While these luxe examples show it over mirror, it can easily dress up the most humble of painted walls as a DIY project.

Using white lattice over old mercury-glass mirror was a strategy for bringing oceanfront light into this breakfast room of a house on Long Island Sound. Designer Allison Caccona used it on walls and moved it into the all-white kitchen as a graceful motif for soffit-cabinet doors. Robert Kime Tashkent pattern fabric provides pops of color on the Louis XV-style breakfast room chairs.

Lattice becomes a motif on cabinets and the crown of the mantel hood, framing the Viking range with French charm in this kitchen. The cargo-style pendants are antique American Halophane fixtures; Calacatta gold marble with exceptionally delicate veining was chosen for the counters and backsplash.

For a historically-conscious Paris apartment, mirrored trellis painted celadon-green, a popular 18th century color, is fashioned into doors topped by fans for a Palladian-window effect. The decorative diamonds of the doors are edged in circles and honeycomb tone-on-tone rugs echo the motif. Both the medallion chair and 10-drawer bureau are antiques.

The dining room of the same apartment offers a more subdued role for lattice on bottom doors of the built-in china display cabinets. Mixing formal Doric columns with touches of trellis shows a super-refined approach to architectural woodwork by the apartment’s designer, Henri Garelli.

When attending a home-design show, I couldn’t resist taking photos of trellis displays of various styles in the Accents of France booth. The firm’s website includes a brief history of treillage and shows diagrams of the myriad shapes and styles.

 (Sources: House Beautiful, WOI)

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