A wall is not just a background. For Omexco, the Belgian atelier making textile wallcoverings since 1976, a wall is the opening line of a room’s story.
The Romo Group has been in the business of beautiful interiors since 1902. Omexco found a home there because the values lined up: a love of real materials, real craft, and a refusal to treat the walls as an afterthought. Every order is custom-cut, and every material is chosen for how it feels as much as how it looks, and what it costs the planet to make.
This season brings three collections that prove walls can do a lot more than hold a room together.
Nowka: Organic shapes in burled wood extend the mural into a unified landscape. Photo courtesy of Romo Group
Kim Mupangilaï: Craft & Cartography
Kim Mupangilaï is a Belgian-Congolese designer and professor at Parsons School of Design based in Brooklyn. Her furniture functions as an autobiography, with pieces built from teak, volcanic stone, and raffia that carry the weight of a dual cultural identity.
What Romo and Omexco recognized in her practice was a shared material instinct. Wood and raffia, both rooted in Congolese craft and tradition, have a striking materiality about them. The eight designs in the collaboration take her furniture forms and bring them directly to the wall, as texture, relief, and physical presence.
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- Kisa: The sculptural elegance of sisal, conveying depth and dimension.
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- Koroo: Natural raffia, woven with depth and understated elegance. Photos courtesy of Romo Group
Each piece is named in Tshiluba, a major Bantu language language of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Oba wallcovering rises in relief, evoking carved wood or layered raffia. Kisa conveys the sculptural weight of sisal through the density of its weave. Lumbi captures natural sisal in its simplest, most graceful form. Koroo is woven raffia. Nama traces burled wood grain across a surface nearly 12 feet wide.
“Kim creates incredible mixed-media wall coverings that are installed in small panels, allowing you to get really creative with the repetition,” says Amy Ellingson, Romo’s showroom manager. “It feels like such a fresh, different take on wall treatments.”
Nebula: A stylized floral motif exuding a subtle sheen. Photo courtesy of Romo Group
Eclipse: Nobility of the Near-Dark
Eclipse is a collection centered around presence; that moment when a material reveals more depth, texture, and dimension than you expected. The collection works entirely in black and white, which sounds restrictive until you see it in person. A wall dressed in Eclipse makes everything around it feel more considered. For designers working with spaces that need to feel intentional without being loud about it, this collection does the job.
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- Alhena: Waterlily fiber assembled with finesse, showcasing the artistry of craftsmanship.
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- Astral: Handcrafted paper and wood marquetry—an echo of the crescent moon. Photos courtesy of Romo Group
The Elemental wallcovering is a long-pile velvet that absorbs light rather than bouncing it back. Electra has the feel of something woven that is contemporary but unhurried, like linen drying in flat winter light, or a sand garden that nobody’s touched yet. Nebula is a stylized floral motif with a subtle sheen. Astral is made on handcrafted paper and wood marquetry, and echoes the shape of a crescent moon.
“Some of these are made from washi paper that’s torn over templates by hand, then crushed, dyed, and sewn,” Amy says. “The wall coverings are very chunky and dimensional. You look at them and think, ‘how did someone even conceptualize this, let alone get it onto a wall?’ It has so much character.”
Orvyn: A mist-like landscape, softly shimmering in sculpted waves. Photo courtesy of Romo Group
Mirari: Landscapes at the Edge of the Imaginary
“Mirari” means “to marvel and behold with astonishment.” It’s an apt name for a collection that asks what it feels like to look at a world that doesn’t quite exist. It contains landscapes, luminous reflections, and imagery that sits somewhere between memory and invention, and between Japanese woodblock tradition and something more contemporary.
“This line leans into a kind of pandan, wabi-sabi aesthetic,” says Amy. “You’ll notice small irregularities—little fabric pools and subtle imperfections—that make it feel both modern and ancient at the same time since the techniques are so traditional.”
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- Naxi: a delicate interplay of textures and light evokes the traditional art of handcrafted paper.
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- Hanara: A stylized botanical motif, exuding a delicate sheen. Photos courtesy of Romo Group
Where Kim’s collection is sculptural and Eclipse is architectural, Mirari is painterly. Its printed motifs and textures are designed for rooms where you actually sit still: the study, the bedroom, the kind of space where you notice what’s on the walls because you have time to. Naxi, one of the collection’s strongest pieces, layers texture and light to evoke handcrafted paper. Orvyn displays a mist-like landscape, softly shimmering in sculpted waves. Hanara offers a stylized botanical motif with a delicate sheen.
See all three new Romo x Omecxo wallcovering collections at omexco.com
