Animal Prints in Interior Design: Awesome or Awful?

For the recurring series Love/Hate Relationship, two writers in a chosen topic debate the merits and failings of a controversial trend.

DESIGN PROS’ PERSPECTIVES on animal prints are fiercely divergent. Opponents believe the motifs of zebra and cougar and cowhide hog all the attention in a room, like a miniskirt at a funeral, and as Alexis Barr, instructor at the New York School of Interior Design, said, “carry associations of drama and decadence.” Others believe the prints function as a neutral. Sarah Vaile, an interior designer in Chicago, holds that a critter-pelt pattern actually “falls away” in decor, adding, “The universe knew what it was doing when it made these patterns a camouflage.” Here, two design aficionados take sides.

Animal prints bring timeless texture and joie de vivre to a space.

The great 20th-century French designer Madeleine Castaing—remembered for befriending avant-garde artists like Jean Cocteau as well as for her affection for wall-to-wall leopard carpet—once summed up her approach to interiors thus: “Be audacious, but with taste.” Is it any wonder she was a devotee of animal prints?

I’m in Castaing’s corner. Wildlife motifs that some people find tacky I see as the epitome of insouciant chic—full of Auntie Mame joie de vivre. Indeed, animal prints have been a staple of luxe décor for millennia. In ancient Egypt, the tombs of the pharaohs were filled with fabric adorned with panther and leopard designs. Today, contemporary designers like Ken Fulk, Miles Redd and Jenna Lyons (who uses splashes of animal print at home as deftly as she did in her fashions for J.Crew) keep the motifs current.

“Animal prints get a bad rap because they’ve been used and abused,” said Ms. Vaile, the Chicago designer, “but since they’re found in nature, they really work wonderfully as a neutral. I like to think of them as just a more organic version of a dot or a stripe.” Her go-to upholstery fabric for skeptical clients? Les Touches by Brunschwig & Fils—an “entry-level” design of abstracted spots that Ms. Vaile said she’s found to be universally loved, even by those most averse to animal print.

New York City designer Ashley Whittaker said she often reaches for Tigre from Scalamandre or Velours Tiger by Nobilis to add a strategic splash of luxe texture to a space, as in the home office at top. But she added that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. “You don’t have to overdo it by upholstering an 8-foot sofa,” she said. “There are a million scales and palettes—it’s all about the mix.”

Leopard not your thing? “There are endless patterns—zebra, tiger, cheetah, giraffe, even cow print and tortoise shell,” said Ms. Vaile. “A pop here and there is just the way to strike a balance between old-world and fun.”

—Sarah Karnasiewicz

Animal prints make interiors look debauched and feral—not fun.

Anything the more unsavoury souls of history rabidly embraced is a hard no for me. Hugh Hefner, for example, kept a Georgian-style sofa upholstered in a bestial tiger-patterned velvet at the Playboy Mansion. (Perhaps proof of its ick-factor, it sold at auction in 2018 for just $4,375…in a mere four bids.)

Of course Hef liked them. Animal prints instantly sexualise the look of the person wearing them—think Peggy Bundy of “Married…with Children”—and they do the same in an interior. These motifs also pilfer from an animal kingdom that has already coughed up plenty to humankind without consent. “I don’t believe animals should be used as a decorative object, even if it’s not actual fur,” said New York designer Becky Shea. “Those patterns are meant to be in the wild, not in a house.”

Even a sleek, modern pouf, when wrapped in tiger or giraffe, lends a room the inherently debauched, feral note of Snooki & JWoww’s Jersey City home. The 1855 former firehouse they shared for their eponymous MTV reality TV series featured zebra, cheetah and Dalmatian-print décor and was anything but hot.

“You can find things that are more interesting and appealing to the eye,” said Rebecca Birdwell, a Manhattan strategist for the design and architecture industry. She points to the patterns of Parisian textile designer Sylvie Johnson, a go-to artist for starchitects like New York City’s Annabelle Selldorf. The French maker weaves organic, nature-derived patterns, like a Japanese-silk motif named Bolero that recalls fish scales, a subtle alternative to ham-handed mimicry.

Because bold animal prints like zebra and cowhide are polarising, they swing in and out of fashion more than other patterns, said Ms. Barr, the instructor. “They fall into the ‘proceed with caution’ category,” she said, also because they command so much notice. I guess I like my interiors on the introverted side. I don’t need to come home to a sofa à la Snooki without a mute button.

—Kathryn O’Shea-Evans