A belated THANK YOU to everyone who commented. This is the final result. We're super happy with it. Room A north facing "through-lounge" in a new build, 3 bed semi detached house Paint Walls: Purbeck Stone, Farrow & Ball Ceiling: Strong White, Farrow & Ball By the way, the room isn't as long and skinny as it looks in the photos. Painting it all one colour actually made it feel much, much larger. We were really impressed with the quality of advice the F&B staff gave us in regards to colour. We loved Purbeck Stone from the minute we saw it, and being brave really paid off.

Hi Gerty, I would definitely recommend a neutral textured wallpaper if you didn't want to just paint the walls either side. Harlequin do some really nice ones that would work against the busy fireplace. Or you could use on another wall and paint either side of the fireplace, hard to say for sure without seeing the whole room. This has a slight plaster affect which slightly emulates the pattern in the fireplace... This one is a metallic texture which could look really nice... This shows how the textured wallpaper will look but I would stick to a neutral colour...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><md>Weve now gone "bold" in our little cloakroom and totally transformed the look of it....we are so impressed

Agree with above comments. If you did use a heavy duty lining paper it would need to be applied horizontally but even then you may get problems of the texture showing through, unevenness at the joins where it won’t adhere because of the texture, bubbles or lifting because of the extra layers, and it might make it difficult to remove later on because of the extra adhesive and paint. I would either paint with a trade Matt paint so the texture is not so obvious or strip and re do.