I'm not a fan of wallpaper, though I'll admit there are some powder rooms on Houzz with beautiful, two-tone wallpaper that I love. The last time we bought a house we had to choose between two equally desirable, quite similar vintage houses--one with wallpaper on every wall (even in the hallways!) and one with painted walls throughout. In both cases we planned to repaint in colors of our choice, but we bought the house without the wallpaper because it was simply less work to repaint the painted walls than to strip a house full of someone else's tacky, outdated wallpaper. So by all means use wallpaper if you love it and will be in the home for awhile, but don't expect anyone else to appreciate it when you sell. Wallpaper (like patterned fabric) is just too individual a preference to translate easily into someone else's aesthetic.

Thanks all for the suggestions! White ceiling really makes sense thanks Helen. I would not have thought to do that but as i sat out there over the weekend it makes perfect sense. At this stage I'll stick to repainting the deck as well due to the cost but long term I'll definitely be looking at sanding or replacing the timbers of the deck. With all the dark colours it really does have an oppressive feeling and i almost feel like i need to hunch over as i walk through so lightening up the colour scheme is definitely the way to go. And yes Angela those blind will be going :)

Id go a dark colour to help it recede but Id add a flowering climber. My favs are pink or white natives.

I am just wondering whether it is a good thing or not to go with solid colours like the dark blue (prussian blue), grey floors and white on other walls all in tiles. I see that a lot of designers seem to do a pattern on one wall, but I haven't found one suitable and whatever I do, I just don't want it to look out of date in 5 years time. I am not sure how about much of the prussian blue tile is appropriate in order for it to be noticeable but not too overpowering.