We know people want samples. We understand that it also leads to trust building. You buy a sample for a few dollars, it turns up and then you trust that company to provide the actual fabric or wallpaper.
We have recently only reintroduced sampling after two years of practically no samples during the Covid pandemic.
But samples can be problematic. We love and hate them at the same time.
Firstly we have over 4000 wallpaper and fabrics on our website - that's a lot of samples to physically hold and manage. We can't keep them all here in our warehouse. We do try to keep our exclusive ranges of wallpapers here so we can personally cut up samples for customers. But sometimes we have to order them in and they can take weeks, and sometimes they just don't turn up.
Our German manufacturer who produces 6000 wallpapers no longer supplies or uses sampling. They believe their photo technology is advanced enough to move on from the 'old fashioned' concept of sampling.
Some of their more popular wallpapers we buy in spare rolls and cut them up for sampling.
However many of our samples are cut by machine in Europe. This means if you order an A4 sample, we have to fold it to get in the NZ courier bag (and believe me we have had complaints about folded samples). It also means that we can not predict what part of the pattern you may get. If the pattern repeat is 53cm and you order an A4 sample you may not get that bird or flower you were specifically wanting to see.
See here where there is the start of a ballerina but she has no head.
And here is another of two unicorns but no heads.
Of course if the wallpaper you are hoping for is a busy pattern it probably doesn't matter you don't get the full repeat as you will see enough.
Take for example Cascading Gardens - you will see a lot of this in an A4 sample so in this particular design sampling may work well (we also cut these ones up ourselves).
The most important advice when ordering samples: Don't colour match from samples. As wallpaper and fabrics all work in batches or dye lots samples can vary in colour from actual product.
So what is the point of samples if you can not colour match from them and they don't often have the full design within the sample size (and can possibly take weeks to arrive)?
Samples are good for texture, or basic colour matching (ie if you just want to see what sort of blue or pink it could be but don't want to colour match paint from it). They are also for people nervous from ordering for the first time. We often follow up with a courtesy email asking if they need help with stock levels, calculations or any other questions.
A lot of time and effort goes in to samples - way more than you may realise. Feel free to ask us questions about you sample order before purchase.
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