Arguably the greatest strength of wallpaper is that there is very little that you cannot do with a design, and no matter what effect you want to convey, there will be a pattern, a texture or a colour scheme that a specialist can find for you.

However, certain historic designs and design periods do inevitably fascinate, to the point that the Victoria & Albert Museum in London has a particularly strong collection of 19th-century wallpaper patterns that inspire designers to this very day.

One aspect that is particularly striking is that these designs happen to have striking and vibrant colour schemes, ones that have endured for nearly two centuries and long after time should have caught up with the pigments, particularly the greens used in the many floral designs of the era.

However, there was a big, deadly secret behind those bright colours; the inks used at the time were extremely poisonous. Many green dyes, including Paris Green and Scheele’s Green, are made using the poison arsenic.

The poisonous qualities of arsenic became increasingly known in the 19th century, with fainting episodes, serious illness and even deaths associated with green dyes used on candles and dresses.

However, whilst there were calls to ban it as early as the 1830s, it was believed at the time that only direct contact such as licking the wallpaper or touching wet inks was deadly, something that was proven to be completely false

Not only could the ink and paint flake and become airborne that way, but in damp conditions arsenic released arsine gas that would slowly poison anyone near it. This slow-descending illness would later partially inspire Charlotte Gilman’s novella The Yellow Wallpaper.

There was even a theory that green-painted walls contributed to the death of Napoleon, although this has since been proven false.

However, after the well-publicised death of Matilda Scheuer, the public turned against poisonous dyes and the colour green in general, and the last wallpaper brand to use the dyes stopped being produced in the 1890s.

Modern synthetic inks and dyes can provide these vibrant looks without any of these side effects, and as a result of this advance in technology, Victorian-inspired wallpapers are enjoying something of a comeback.