Most homes leave the laundry room, the nursery and the small bathroom in whatever paint was left over. This Cochrane home did the opposite and ran one dark crocodile-embossed paper full height through all three. A matte dark texture is the least forgiving surface in wallcovering: there is no pattern to distract from a seam, so an opening of a hair reads as a pale line down the wall, and over-working the face leaves a shine that never comes out. Three small rooms also carry more linear metres of cut line than one large feature wall. The substrate was prepared flat, seams were planned away from the busiest sightlines, each room was hung to a struck plumb line rather than to corners that are rarely true, and inside corners were wrapped and re-cut.