Suchi Reddy and Calico Wallpaper Apply Neuroaesthetics to Painterly Wall Coverings
The brand-new Luminous collection uses atmospheric washes of light and color to influence mood and perception
Suchi Reddy has focused her architecture practice around neuroaesthetics, a fascinating field of inquiry that examines how interiors resonate with the brain and body. That research informs the wide breadth of projects undertaken by her firm, Reddymade, across pristinely appointed residences, handcrafted collectible furnishings, and immersive installations presented at the National Building Museum and Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Until recently, however, she hadn’t applied her guiding mantra, “form follows feeling,” to wallpaper. That changed after a series of illuminating discussions with Calico Wallpaper founders Nick and Rachel Cope, who share her interest in how interiors can convey movement and presence.
Together, they began to consider wallpaper as a medium that engages perception and comes alive through light and atmosphere. “Neuroaesthetics tells us that our nervous systems are changed by what surrounds us—that beauty isn’t passive, but it acts on us,” Reddy tells Galerie. “The challenge with wallpaper is that it has to do that work repeatedly across different light conditions, different rooms, and different lives.” Their inaugural collection together, Luminous, which will debut during NYCxDesign in May, treats light as a sensory force that influences one’s perception and mood. The meaning behind each colorway can vary depending on its setting and the viewer; the same range of color can read differently from one individual to the next.
The collection comprises six distinct patterns, each designed to evoke totally unique emotional responses. Gradients sweep across each surface in atmospheric fields that trace the behavior of light as it diffuses and shifts, echoing the ways perception changes over time. Each colorway, whether through subtle gradients and spectral veils of color, plumbs the spiritual dance between light and shadow, revealing profound depth and nuance through tonal variations.
Cope, a painter, began with a series of painting tests that she shared with Reddy, refining each iteration through an ongoing exchange. Together, they arrived at painterly washes of light, which Cope executed by hand at full scale. In Beam, for example, cool silvers slip into mauve and slate, almost like light skimming a reflective surface at dusk. Flash turns warmer, with lilac and soft gold diffusing through a pale ground that arcs across. “We’d move back and forth between intuitive, visual explorations and more analytical conversations about how the eye and brain interpret gradients, contrast, and spatial depth,” explains Cope. “The process challenged our instincts as designers and opened up a more experimental approach to atmosphere.”
The gradients emerged from considering how specific qualities of light register at the body, from the softness of early morning to the charge of a sudden burst of brightness. From there, tonal shifts carried the work forward. “They became a way of mapping the movement through that state—the way mood doesn’t hold still, but travels,” Reddy says. “I wanted someone standing in a room with these designs to feel the shift happening around them, almost imperceptibly, the way consciousness moves.” She points to the relationships between tones as the foundation of each colorway. “The gradients create a kind of visual breathing,” she continues. “That’s the energy of the work, rather than its appearance in any particular condition or space.”
The mesmerizing patterns build on Calico Wallpaper’s flair for painterly compositions, which often extend fine art beyond the frame through vibrant custom-fit murals. Reddy found a shared sensibility in their unorthodox approach, particularly in how they translate intangible phenomena into immersive surfaces. Previous collections, for example, channeled the electromagnetic fields of aura photography and simulated excavated terrain. “Suchi’s work in perception and the brain offered a parallel inquiry from a completely different discipline,” Rachel adds. “She introduced a framework for understanding why certain visual experiences resonate on a deeper level.”
Luminous will debut during NYCxDesign at Calico Wallpaper’s Tribeca showroom in an installation that explores color, sensation, and emotion. Visitors will traverse shifting environments of light and tone, encountering firsthand how subtle color variations can alter their perception. For Reddy, it marks an extension of her ongoing inquiry into how interiors can impact the body and mind. “The way Nick and Rachel work with color—letting it breathe, bleed, and settle rather than imposing precision onto it—reflects the same conviction I hold about architecture: that a room should feel a certain way before it looks a certain way,” she says. “They lead with feeling and an artistic gesture before they ever arrive at form, which is exactly how I approach every space I design.”