Croquet Stripe is a stripe that was painted rather than ruled. The bands are laid down with a loaded brush and a good deal of water, so the edges are soft, the colour pools where the brush slowed and lifts where it ran dry, and no two stripes are identical along their length. It is a small distinction and it changes everything about how the design reads.
A ruled stripe imposes order on a room. A painted one suggests it. The verticals still do the useful work, raising a ceiling and straightening a wall that leans, giving a room a quiet architecture, but without the hardness that makes a printed stripe difficult in a bedroom or a bathroom. From across a room the effect is closer to a washed or dragged paint finish than to a pattern.
Because the design has no horizontal element, it sits easily against joinery and behind furniture, and it makes an unusually good background for pictures. It suits bedrooms, bathrooms, dressing rooms and passages, and it works particularly well above painted panelling. Pair it with plain linen, painted timber and matting; it needs nothing else to look finished. Above painted panelling it is about as easy a decision as a wall allows.
