Paula Wellmann studied stage design at the University of the Arts Berlin and set and costume design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht. As a stage design assistant at the Berliner Ensemble, she assisted stage designers like Robert Wilson, Achim Freyer, and Karl-Ernst Herrmann. Since 2015, she has worked as a freelance stage and costume designer, as well as a painter.

As an interdisciplinary artist, she combines painting, space and costume to create exaggerated, immersive visual worlds. She has collaborated with directors such as Lucia Bihler, Bonn Park, Emre Akal, Christian Weise, Lilja Rupprecht and Ersan Mondtag, and has worked at theatres including the Maxim Gorki Theatre, the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Thalia Theatre Hamburg, the Schauspiel Stuttgart and the Schauspiel Düsseldorf.

Her productions with Ersan Mondtag have been invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen and the Wiener Festwochen. She was awarded the Eva Bonacker Prize in 2017 and was named Stage Designer of the Year by Die Deutsche Bühne in 2020. She has also been a guest lecturer in the Department of Contemporary Puppet Theatre at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts since 2025.