Mark Alexander | Offset Wallcovering

Offset comes from Mark Alexander's Grasscloth Prints collection, which means the design is laid over a woven natural-fibre ground rather than onto a flat paper. The grass shows through, so the print picks up the horizontal striation of the weave and breaks slightly wherever the fibre changes thickness. The result is soft-edged rather than crisp. It is a wallcovering for people who want a pattern on the wall but do not want the wall to announce it.

Rolls are 91 centimetres wide and 7.32 metres long, with a 70 centimetre vertical repeat. There are four colourways, all of them quiet. Whitewash and Chalk are the two palest and read almost as texture from a few feet away. Loam is a warm earth brown that suits a room with timber in it. Typhoon is the grey, and the one we use where the scheme is already cool. None of the four fights a painted ceiling.

We put it in bedrooms and dressing rooms most often, where the fibre takes the hardness out of a plastered box, and on the walls of a study lined with dark shelving. It works in a dining room as well, particularly by candlelight. Pair it with undyed linen at the window, a wool carpet or a plain sisal, and keep the joinery in a flat matt paint drawn from the palest tone in the paper. Order a sample to see it in your own light.

This is hung by pasting the wall, and it is worth using a paperhanger who has worked with grasscloth, since the surface marks if paste gets onto the face. Order all the rolls together and check that the batch numbers match before cutting, and add a spare roll for later repairs. Panel-to-panel variation in the grass is part of the material, so plan the drop order and reverse-hang alternate lengths if you want the shift to read as even.

• Roll size: 91 cm wide x 7.32 m long
• Pattern repeat: 70 cm vertical
• Suitable for: Feature walls, full rooms, bedrooms, studies
• Care: Wipe gently with a soft, dry cloth
• Collection: Grasscloth Prints, Mark Alexander
• Colourways: 4 (Chalk, Loam, Typhoon, Whitewash)