Mark Alexander | Canvas

Canvas is a plain woven wallcovering: a close, even texture with the weave left visible and nothing drawn on top of it. The surface has the dry, slightly open quality of artist's canvas, which is where the name comes from, and it takes colour the way a woven ground does, unevenly at the level of the fibre, so a wall is never quite a flat block of tone. It is the quietest thing in the collection and the easiest of them to live with.

The roll is 91 centimetres wide and 7.32 metres long, with no pattern repeat, so drops cut straight to height. Five colourways: Dove, a soft warm grey; Stoneware, a deeper earth neutral; Greenware, a muted green; Glacier, a pale cool blue; and Typhoon, the darkest and greyest of the five. The whole run is low in saturation, which is what makes these usable across a whole house rather than in one room.

We use Canvas where a painted wall would be too plain and a pattern would be too much: a hall, a stair, a bedroom, the inside of a run of wardrobes. It is good under fitted joinery and behind open shelving, where a busier paper would fight the objects on it. Pair it with linen, with painted timber a half-tone away, and with a jute or wool floor. Order a sample to see it in your own light.

It is a paste-the-wall paper. Keep paste off the face, as a woven ground absorbs it and the mark will show. With no repeat, quantities come off wall height plus a trimming allowance at each end. Tone shifts a little between panels, which is inherent in a woven material rather than a defect, so hang drops in roll order and reverse alternate lengths to balance it. Order in one batch number and add a spare roll.

• 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: 5 (Dove, Glacier, Typhoon, Greenware, Stoneware)