Armani Casa : Giorgio Armani's Design Language, On Your Walls

Inside the wallcoverings collection built with Jannelli & Volpi, and why it still divides a room without shouting.

Giorgio Armani built a fashion house on restraint. Grey where others reached for black, a jacket that moved with the body rather than against it, a colour palette so disciplined it became its own signature. Armani Casa, launched in 2000, took that same instinct and pointed it at the home. Furniture, lighting, and eventually walls, all carrying the same quiet confidence that made the clothes recognisable from across a room.

At Studio 198 we stock the wallcoverings side of that world: a collection produced in partnership with Jannelli & Volpi, the Milan wallpaper house Armani chose in 2014 to translate his design language onto vinyl, silk, and non-woven bases. It's a licence that's lasted over a decade for a reason, and it shows in the finish of every roll.

01 Why Jannelli & Volpi

Armani could have worked with any wallpaper manufacturer in Italy. He chose a family firm founded in 1961, still run by the founder's children, still producing everything in-house at a plant outside Milan rather than farming it out. That matters more than it sounds. A brand built on tailoring precision needs a manufacturing partner who won't cut corners on repeat accuracy or colour consistency across a production run, and Jannelli & Volpi's other licence, MissoniHome, tells you they know how to handle a demanding creative house.

The result is a collection that reads as unmistakably Armani, geometric, restrained, never loud, while carrying the technical backbone of a serious wallpaper manufacturer rather than a fashion label's side project.

02 The materials, properly explained

This isn't a one-substrate collection, and knowing the difference matters before you specify anything.

Silk and lurex murals. Aida, inspired by Ancient Egypt and named after Verdi's opera, is woven from 70% silk and 30% lurex, supplied as four panels making up a 348cm wide, 300cm high mural. Nabucco works the same way, a silk and lurex wallcovering with the kind of light-shift you only get from a genuine fibre blend, not a printed effect. These are statement pieces for a single wall, not a whole room, and they're cut to order, so measure twice.

Engraved and printed vinyl. Montmartre uses a galuchat, shagreen-effect, design across six colourways on a 70cm wide roll with a 60cm pattern repeat, standard vinyl construction on a stable backing. Versailles works in a similar format, drawing on the grandeur of the French château for its pattern rather than its palette. Vinyl of this kind is what makes the collection liveable day to day: it takes wear, it's simpler to hang, and it doesn't ask for a conservation-level installer.

Textured and specialist finishes. Notting Hill applies a moiré engraving technique to vinyl, borrowing an effect originally developed for Armani's fashion fabrics and translating it onto a wallcovering base. Metallized Plain does exactly what it says, a metallic-support plain colourway designed to coordinate with pattern designs like Towada and Himalaya rather than stand alone.

03 The stories behind the patterns

Armani has always named his interiors after places that mean something to him, and the wallcoverings keep that habit. Pantelleria takes its stone-effect texture and irregular wave pattern from the volcanic island he's spoken about as a favourite retreat. Panarea, the smallest of the Aeolian islands, translates into a plissé design with a trompe l'oeil finish, all folded shadow and no actual texture underfoot. Versailles reaches further back, to Louis XIV's court, rendered as a galuchat damier pattern rather than anything overtly historical.

None of it reads as pastiche. That's the trick of good licensing done properly: the reference sits underneath the design rather than shouting from the surface.

04 Specifying it for a real project

Most of the collection is sold by the roll, cut to order, non-refundable once cut, so get your measurements right before you order. Our wallpaper calculator will convert your wall dimensions into rolls needed once you know the pattern repeat, which varies significantly across the collection, from Montmartre's 60cm repeat to the larger-scale panel murals where repeat isn't really the relevant measurement at all.

Professional installation is worth the cost here. Silk and shantung panels need a paste-the-wall approach and a steady hand with pattern matching across panels; the heavier vinyls are more forgiving but still benefit from someone who's hung a textured wallcovering before. This is not a Saturday-afternoon DIY roll.

05 Common questions