Disney and Sanderson Team Up for Wallpaper and Fabric Collection

Aug 15, 2023

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Your favorite characters have never looked so chic.

Design-minded Disney lovers are in for a real treat! The iconic brand is collaborating with British fabric and wallpaper manufacturer, Sanderson, on a collection of chic wallcoverings and fabric featuring some of Disney’s most beloved characters.

The Disney Home x Sanderson collection showcases 14 wallpapers and 12 fabrics, many of which are inspired by the original Sanderson Disney designs, which debuted in the 1930s following the introduction of the Mickey Mouse comic strip.

Where the fabric offering features Mickey and Minnie, 101 Dalmatians, Snow White, Dumbo, Bambi, Alice in Wonderland, Donald Duck, and Winnie the Pooh prints, the wallpaper offering showcases all those plus Peter Pan.

Of all the prints offered, Snow White, Mickey & Minnie at the Farm, and Mickey & Minnie are all originals from the 1930's archives.

“The original designs were hand screen printed and it was important that we worked in a way that would deliver this signature look,” says Claire Vallis, head of design for Sanderson Design Group.

She adds, “For our new interpretation, we kept the hand screen print mark by using up-to-date engraving technology, but printed digitally for modern times. This gave us that signature Mickey movement. Mickey [at] the Farm is an original archive document, so using this technology was important to creating that authentic reproduction of the design.”

While only three of the prints are exact replicas from the 1930s, the entire new Disney Home x Sanderson collection draws inspiration from the archives. Specifically, when it came to incorporating other iconic Disney films into the collection, Vallis says that Sanderson homed in on their most popular non-Disney designs and then married the two.

“The idea for 101 Dalmatians, for example, came from an original toile in the Sanderson archive,” she reveals. “We used that toile as the base of the design and then added the beautifully drawn characters into the layout. 101 Dalmatians has such an elegance to it that it lent itself wonderfully to a toile style.”

That’s the beauty of Sanderson—the brand revolves around the concept of past and present and finds ways to intertwine the two. “Our archive is full to the brim of beautiful, vintage florals, which we pulled out and considered,” Vallis shares.

“A particular flower-strewn meadow really struck us and it seemed so whimsical to add in Bambi and Thumper drawings from the Disney archive, for a sense of fun and imagination but so respectful of the original designs,” she adds.

Of course, not all of the Disney Home x Sanderson designs are brimming with blooms—some, like Minnie on the Move and Mickey Stripe, feature more of a pop art impression.

“Mickey Stripe was from an archive sticker and the tiger stripe background is iconic to Sanderson,” Vallis says. “It is a best-seller in our portfolio and has such longevity to its style, it’s almost a character of its own from our collections.”

By combining Mickey with Sanderson's iconic striped wallpaper, the brand hoped to create a design fit for playrooms and studies alike. “The use of the stripe really grounded and updated the Mickey design all at once,” Vallis admits. “In the Humbug colorway, it is funky, modern, and conversational—you can just imagine it in a bar or a den. It feels like pop art, which makes it eternally cool and universally appealing.”

The prints aren’t the only thing from the archive, the colors are, too. “The colorways came from the archive but what is interesting is that they feel new again,” Vallis says. “Those tones and shades from the 1920s and '30s—the soft coral pinks and powder blues—look so new and fresh for today. Macaron Green and Butterscotch also came from the archive and have strong '30s coloration, but again, look so fresh and new.”

Leaning into the modern interpretation of vintage fabric and wallpaper design, Sanderson added other versatile colors to the mix for the Disney Home collaboration. “We added in colors such as Chocolate, Neapolitan, and Gumball Green, which we have been seeing in interiors being used by designers in schemes, so we wanted to incorporate those shades as well,” Vallis says.

The Disney Home x Sanderson fabric and wallpaper collection is inspired by the past, fit for the present, and ready to be rediscovered in the future. That’s part of what’s so fun about this launch: It will end up in the archive, too, potentially inspiring even more prints down the line.

“We are creating new icons for the future as these new artworks will go back into our archive to be rediscovered,” Vallis says.

To shop the Disney Home x Sanderson collection, visit Sanderson or Wallpaper Direct.

Rebecca R. Norris is a full-time freelance writer living in the DC metro area. She writes for a variety of publications, primarily covering women’s interest topics. When she's not writing, she can be found out and about with her Jack-Chi, Cash, sweating her way through an Orangetheory class, or taking it easy with family and friends

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