23/07/2026
What if bubble wrap was never meant to protect anything?
[Reading time: 1 min]
In 1957, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes were working on a new idea for interiors: a three-dimensional wallcovering made by sealing two plastic layers together and trapping air inside.
The ambition was clear.To bring texture, volume and a sense of modernity into interiors.
But no one really wanted it.Too unfamiliar, too unconventional, too far from what people expected a wall to be.So the material changed direction.
It was proposed as insulation for greenhouses, with the idea that the trapped air could help retain heat.
Another failure.Then came the pivot.
IBM needed a way to protect its 1401 computers during shipment. That failed wallcovering, with its trapped air and soft cushioning surface, finally found the place where it belonged.From that moment on, bubble wrap stopped trying to dress walls and became a widely recognized packaging material.
The lesson is still relevant to design.A product does not always fail because the idea is wrong.Sometimes, it fails because the application is.
And when it comes to walls, texture alone is never enough.A wallcovering needs materiality, depth, light, balance and touch.It must not simply cover a wall.It must belong to the space.
Explore Texam wallcoverings.
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