Mark Alexander | Beachgrass

Beachgrass is a grasscloth in its plainest form: dried grass stems laid side by side and stitched to a paper backing, with nothing done to them beyond the fibre's own variation. The strands sit close, running horizontally, and each one is a slightly different thickness and a slightly different tone. There is no drawing on it and no repeat. What you are hanging is the material itself, and the whole character of the wall comes from how that material takes light.

The roll is 91 centimetres wide and 7.32 metres long. There is no pattern repeat to match, so drops cut straight to wall height. One colourway, Whitewash: a pale, dry off-white worked over the natural grass, so the fibre's warmer tone still shows through in the thicker strands and along the stitching. It is a pale wall that never quite reads as a painted one, which is the reason to use it.

We use Whitewash where a room needs to be light but not blank: a bedroom, a garden room, a small sitting room facing north. It is the paper we reach for when a client asks for a white room with something in it. Keep the rest pale and matt around it, with unbleached linen at the window, a pale wool rug and painted joinery a half-tone off the paper. Order a sample to see it in your own light.

Hang it paste-the-wall and keep paste off the face, as a washed grasscloth marks and will not clean. Panel-to-panel variation is inherent in the material, and with a pale ground it is more visible rather than less, so hang consecutive drops in roll order and reverse alternate lengths to balance the shading across a wall. Order the full quantity in one batch number and add a spare roll, as a later batch will not match.

• Roll width: 91 cm
• Roll length: 7.32 m
• Pattern repeat: None — random match
• Suitable for: Walls
• Care: Wipe gently with a soft, dry cloth
• Collection: Collage II, Mark Alexander
• Colourways: 1 (Whitewash)