Jonathan Fong Feature Story

Jonathan Fong is a Los Angeles-based interior decorator and author. After years of working as a creative director at an advertising agency, he started decorating his own home for fun and was discovered by HGTV’s “Kitty Bartholomew: You’re Home” show. When his episode aired, viewers loved his witty work, and he became an instant design celebrity. He is the author of three books, Walls that Wow, Flowers that Wow, and Parties that Wow. He appears regularly on HGTV, DIY, and Fine Living, and speaks to packed audiences at home and garden shows across the country.

“Murals right now are my favorite design element because I can go big, bold and beautiful in a way that’s really fresh. Murals have taken on a much higher design quotient than in the 70s. The perspectives, the colors and proportions are more interesting. And with technology allowing you to use your own images, what’s not to love? Murals create a dramatic focal point for a room. Have one wall with a mural, and your whole room changes. I want to put murals everywhere in homes now. When you go to cool hotels and restaurants, you see that they use wall-sized murals all the time. 

I’m all about walls because your walls are the largest decorating canvas in your home. If you do something interesting with your walls, it can make more of an impact than any piece of furniture or accessory in the room. That’s why I wrote my book “Walls that Wow.” It is the book for anyone who wants interesting walls, but is afraid of painting. I was frustrated with the faux painting books on the market. I just didn’t have the artistic ability to do decorative painting and not mess up my walls, so I started using fabric, metal, cardboard and other materials that I could apply on my walls easily. And I wanted them as easy to remove as they were to install. The book as well as his other books in the ‘wow’ series are available at bookstores, www.Amazon.com and his website www.JonathanFong.com.

I wanted to see if it was possible to do large custom graphics for the home at an affordable price, so I did an internet search and found MuralsYourWay.com. I was surprised at how affordable it was. I’ve priced out regular wallpaper and to create your own custom wallpaper with the exact image you want costs even less.

I was designing a menswear-themed apartment, and thought it would be really striking to have a large image of calla lilies wrapped with a neck tie – Mapplethorpe meets Ralph Lauren. So I incorporated a custom mural made from a photograph I had taken. I was looking for images that were bigger than life, because I wanted to play with proportions in the room and used the mural to set the mood. I wanted the calla lily mural to encapsulate the theme of natty attire, but in a tongue-in-cheek way. I didn’t want people to take the room too seriously. So I wanted beauty, with a sense of humor.

When the mural arrived, I was awestruck with how spectacular it looked; the quality of the photo reproduction, the quality of the material. I was impressed. And when it got installed on the wall, you couldn’t stop staring at it. It was that gorgeous. My client was so happy and his friends who’ve seen the apartment love the mural. They feel it makes the room look like something out of “Architectural Digest”.

When decorating the hallway in one of the grandest mansions in Beverly Hills, there was no way I could out-luxury what was already there in terms of antique furniture or accessories. So for the Greystone Mansion Design Showcase, I made a huge design statement instead with larger than life chandeliers that were 9 feet high. The chandeliers are the ultimate luxury, and they are pictured against one color rather than a busy or realistic background because I wanted to give them a pop art quality. They were saying, “Here’s luxury, but here’s a little fun too.” They almost had a fantasy element to them. I wanted the image to be like a work of art with an out of this world feeling, not just another photograph.

Visitors to the Greystone Mansion Design Showcase would usually have to double-take when they saw the chandelier murals. They were so unexpected. Then they would ask what it was, usually assuming that I had an artist paint each giant chandelier on the wall. They were shocked when I told them that they were murals I had custom made from my own image, and they couldn’t believe how affordable it was. They would get up close and touch the murals and ooh and aah. One of the purposes of the showcase was to introduce people to new design trends, and they certainly were amazed by the custom murals.

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