MDF wall panelling, filled and finished in charcoal

Panelling looks simple in a photograph and it is anything but. This room came to us as raw MDF battens fixed to bare plaster: dozens of panel joints, every screw head showing, and a gap along every edge where the timber met the wall.

MDF is thirsty, particularly on the cut edges, and it will drink primer and swell if you rush it. So every joint and screw head was filled and sanded back, every edge caulked into the wall, and the whole lot primed before a drop of colour went on. Get that wrong and a dark finish shows you up: every un-caulked gap becomes a shadow line and every proud joint becomes a ridge.

The panelling was then finished in a deep charcoal, with the walls above the rail kept white so the room stays bright and the panelling reads as one continuous piece rather than a grid of separate boards. Up close the joints simply are not there, which is the entire point of the two days that went in before the colour.