The Unsettling Wallpaper in A24’s ‘Backrooms’ Has a Very Vancouver Backstory

When Canadian grocery and liquor stores snapped back at U.S.-imposed trade tariffs by lining shelves with “Buy Canadian” stickers, an unexpected industry, too, started seeing adjustments.

Long known as “Hollywood North,” Vancouver has often been the backdrop of major and indie films, and when A24’s horror sci-fi Backrooms (starring 12 Years a Slave actor Chiwetel Ejiofor) was filming in the city, that meant set decor needed to be sourced locally, too. The film, which takes place in a seemingly endless liminal space in the backroom of a furniture shop, features an iconic wallpaper: a discomforting, yellowing pattern so outdated, it hints at abandonment.

So when the production’s art department needed to swath multiple sets in the eerie wallpaper, instead of looking to California to procure the wallpaper, they looked toward Vancouver wallpaper manufacturers WallpaperOnline Canada to print 33,000 square-feet of the stuff.

“Historically, film studios have always imported custom wallpaper from California for this industry, but thanks to last years’ political differences, the producers opted to buy local instead,” explains WallpaperOnline’s Ben Monkhouse.

“We essentially worked with the set dec team and art department to try to get the exact right colour,” he says. “A printed product can look quite different in daylight to how it looks on a sound stage under stage lighting, so we went back and forth on something like 30 or 40 different iterations of colour [and] checking samples under different lights. Each time, their art department would make a small tweak (a little more yellow, a little  less yellow, slightly more magenta) and we’d repeat until we found the perfect combination.”

The wallpaper’s designs were made by the production’s art department, with WallpaperOnline custom printing them to scale at its manufacturing warehouse close to Broadway and Burrard Street. Getting its work in Backrooms seemed to start a chain reaction for the company, which was founded in 2023. With the ever-growing film and television industry in B.C., the company continues to work on film sets, including an upcoming project starring Nicole Kidman and TV shows such as Tracker and Murdoch Mysteries.

“I’ve been told that a lot of these productions were previously buying from producers in the U.S., so to bring this element of set design to B.C. has been great,” Monkhouse says.

Now the wallpaper is available to purchase on A24’s website here, but we’re sure this is not the last we’ll see of WallpaperOnline in our upcoming screen binges.