Bespoke wall panelling
Design, materials and installation

Bespoke wall panelling is joinery drawn for one particular wall rather than bought in fixed sizes: panel widths, moulding profiles and finish are all set to suit the room, so it runs cleanly around doors, switches and returns.

Walk into a room with good panelling and the wall has already started speaking. Where bare plaster gives back nothing, a panelled wall holds shadow in its reveals, catches a low raking light along its mouldings, and sets up a rhythm the eye follows without ever naming it. Run a hand across a fielded panel and you feel the field rise gently from its frame, the slight chamfer at the edge, the cool flat of the lacquer. It is the quietest kind of architecture, and it does a great deal of work: it gives a wall relief and proportion that paint alone cannot reach, and it tucks a surprising amount of structure and service away behind a calm, continuous surface. This guide covers the main panelling styles, the materials and finishes used in luxury interiors, how panelling is made and installed, and what drives the cost and the lead time.

What bespoke wall panelling is

Bespoke wall panelling is joinery drawn for one particular wall rather than bought in fixed sizes off a shelf. Panel widths, stile and rail proportions, the depth and profile of the mouldings, the finish — all of it is set to suit the room it lives in. Because it is designed for that exact space, panelling can run cleanly around doors, switches, radiators and returns, and pick up the lines of the skirting and cornice as if it had always been there. That quiet coordination is the whole difference between panelling that looks stuck on and panelling that looks grown out of the wall. It sits within the wider field of bespoke joinery, alongside fitted libraries, media walls and built-in seating.

Design options and styles

Panelling speaks several languages, traditional and contemporary, and the right one follows the architecture of the building and the brief. A Georgian drawing room and a new-build cinema ask for very different treatments. More than the style name, it is the panel module — the proportion of frame to field, how tall a panel stands against how wide — that sets the mood of a wall. Get the proportion right and a room feels settled; get it wrong and even fine mouldings look uneasy.

• Boiserie and raised-and-fielded. The classical idiom: framed panels with a raised central field and carved or run mouldings, the kind of wall that throws soft shadow lines as the light moves through the day. Suited to period rooms, formal dining rooms and reception spaces.
• Shaker. Flat recessed panels in a plain square frame. Quiet, honest and endlessly versatile — at home in halls, studies and the transitional rooms that sit between old and new.
• Contemporary flat and shadow-gap. Plain panels parted by precise negative reveals rather than mouldings. Here the whole detail lives in the gap, that crisp dark line between panels, which leaves nowhere to hide and demands accurate setting out and a dead-flat substrate.
• Fluted and reeded. Vertical concave flutes or convex reeds that gather light along their ridges and add a low, tactile texture. Fluted panelling reads as modern, though it draws on an architectural tradition that runs back to the column.
• Upholstered. Padded panels in fabric or leather, often used in cinemas, bedrooms and members' rooms, where they bring both softness underhand and a welcome hush to the room.
• Marquetry-faced. Veneer pictures and patterns set into the panel face, for rooms that want a single wall to hold the eye. See our note on marquetry for how these surfaces are built up.

Materials and finishes

The substrate and the face material are chosen as two separate decisions. The face decides what you see; the substrate, hidden behind it, decides how flat and how stable the panelling stays for the next twenty years.

• Solid timber. Used for mouldings, beads and posts, where you want the depth and crispness only solid stock gives. Beautiful, but it breathes with the humidity of the room, so it is detailed to let that movement happen quietly rather than fight it.
• Veneer. A fine leaf of timber laid over a stable board — the stability of MDF or ply with the face of the real thing. Veneer lets grain run matched across a whole wall, including book-matched and quarter-matched layouts that solid timber could never reach economically.
• Lacquer and paint. Hand-sprayed finishes in any colour, from a soft open-pore that still shows the grain to a deep high-gloss. A lacquered finish only ever looks as good as the surface beneath it, so flatness in the substrate is everything.
• Fabric and leather. For upholstered panels, chosen with a careful eye on fire performance in commercial settings.
• Metal inlay. Lines and reveals of brass, bronze or steel let into the panel face for a crisp note of definition, a step up from plain timber without the cost of a fully figured wall.

Finish also decides how the room ages and how much it asks of you over time. Open-pore lacquers and oiled timber take on grain and patina as the years pass, which suits country houses and the more relaxed interior. High-gloss lacquer reads crisp and formal, but it is unforgiving — it will mirror every ripple in the wall behind it, so it asks for the most patient substrate work of all. Fabric and leather bring warmth and that lovely hush, at the cost of being harder to keep clean where traffic is high. We tend to talk these trade-offs through against the actual use of the room rather than reaching for a single house default. For a fuller comparison of surfaces, see our materials overview.

Where panelling is used

Panelling earns its place in two kinds of room: those that want presence, and those that need to manage sound. An entrance hall or staircase uses it to set the first impression and to take the knocks of daily life along the way. A dining room or study reaches for it for formality and calm. Home cinemas and media rooms lean on upholstered and acoustic panelling to tame the reflections that would otherwise muddy the sound. In hospitality it does identity work — defining a lobby, a private dining room, a members' club, carrying the character of the place in its very walls. Our portfolio runs across residences and hotels such as The Ned and The Lanesborough, and panelled rooms including a private home cinema and a fitted Kings Library scheme. The full range of work is on our projects page.

How it is made and installed

Panelling is made in our woodwork workshop as a set of components, then brought together on site. The process runs in a clear order, and each stage sets up the one after it.

• Survey and setting out. The wall is measured for level, plumb and bow — and walls are rarely as true as they look. The panel lines are then set out so joints fall in sensible places and the whole layout reads as something decided, not something that simply happened.
• Substrate. A framework or backing board is fixed to the wall to give a flat, true plane to build against. This is the quiet stage where the wall's own unevenness is taken out of the picture.
• Scribing. Edges are cut to follow the floors, ceilings and returns that are almost never perfectly square, so the panelling beds in tight with no shadow line of daylight at its margins.
• Fixing and finishing. Panels are fixed, joints closed, and any on-site finishing carried out. Lacquered work is usually finished back in the workshop, in controlled conditions, to keep the surface flawless.

Acoustic performance is designed in from the start, never bolted on afterwards. Cavity depth, the backing material, the choice between upholstered and perforated panels — all of it shapes how a room sounds. In a cinema or a meeting room we specify this hand in hand with the visual design, so neither is compromised for the other.

Two details, more than any other, separate good panelling from the merely competent. The first is concealment: doors, access hatches and services should melt into the panel module so the wall reads as one unbroken thing. The second is the junctions — where panelling meets the floor, the ceiling, a return. Those edges are exactly where the eye comes to rest, and they are where rushed work always shows itself. We have learned to resolve both on the drawings before a single component is cut; it is far cheaper to move a line on paper than to fudge a junction on site, and it means the workshop and the fitting team are reading from the same setting out. That discipline is the unglamorous heart of a wall that looks effortless.

What drives the cost

There is no single rate for panelling. Cost follows area, complexity and finish, and the spread between a plain painted wall and a fully figured one is wide.

• Style and detail. Run mouldings, fluting and marquetry all take far more hours at the bench than flat panels.
• Material and finish. Matched veneer, high-gloss lacquer and leather sit well above painted MDF.
• Site condition. Walls that are out of true, awkward returns and integrated doors all add setting-out and scribing time.
• Integration. Concealed doors, lighting, screens and services hidden within the panelling bring their own design and coordination work.

For how budgets are built up across a whole commission, see our guide to the cost of bespoke furniture.

Lead times

A panelling scheme moves through three stages: design and survey, workshop production, then installation. Allow several weeks for design and approvals, a production window that stretches or contracts with the finish and the scale, then the fitting itself on site. Lacquered and veneered work asks for longer than painted work, simply because the preparation and the drying cannot be hurried — rushing a lacquer is the surest way to ruin it. Booking the survey early, once the walls are built and plastered, is the single best thing you can do to keep the programme honest. On larger schemes we phase the work so the rooms most critical to the wider programme are surveyed, made and fitted first, which keeps the project moving forward while the later areas are still being detailed.

How to specify wall panelling

The more you can give us at the outset, the smoother the whole thing runs. Send the room drawings, the elevations and the intended finishes, along with any constraints — fixed door positions, services buried in the wall, a radiator that cannot move. Tell us the style, the panel module if you already have one in mind, and any integration the room needs: concealed doors, screens, lighting, an acoustic target. Our detailed checklist lives in how to specify bespoke joinery, and the product details for this work sit on our wall panelling page.

How we work

We design, make and install panelling as a single package, coordinated with everything else in the room rather than dropped in beside it. We survey the wall ourselves, draw the layout, produce through our workshop network and fit with our teams — so the people who set out the drawing and the people who close the last joint are never strangers to one another. Panelling is so often part of a wider joinery scheme that it is detailed to sit comfortably against the adjoining cabinetry, doors and storage, things like bespoke fitted wardrobes. To begin, send us your drawings through contact.

Can wall panelling improve acoustics?

Yes, when it is designed to. Upholstered panels and panels with an absorbent backing take the edge off reflections and soften a room you can hear the difference the moment you step in. Perforated or slatted panels set over a cavity can be tuned to particular frequencies. In home cinemas and meeting rooms we set acoustic targets at the design stage and build the panelling to meet them, so the wall stays calm to look at and quietly does its work for the ear.

What is the difference between boiserie and fluted panelling?

Boiserie is the classical, framed style — raised or fielded panels and run mouldings, rooted deep in period interiors and at its best under a low, shadow-casting light. Fluted panelling runs repeated vertical concave grooves across a flatter face and reads firmly contemporary. Both are bespoke, but boiserie is moulding-led and traditional, where fluted work is texture-led and modern.

Is bespoke panelling worth it over off-the-shelf kits?

For a luxury interior, without question. Kits arrive in fixed sizes that rarely line up with real doors, services and existing trims, so they leave a trail of awkward fillers and half-panels in the corners. Bespoke panelling is set out for the actual wall in front of it, built on better substrates and finishes, and fitted to close tolerances at every junction. The result does not look applied to the building; it looks as though it grew there, and a well-made wall will quietly outlast the fashions that come and go in front of it. That, in the end, is what panelling is for — and we would be glad to draw yours.