Once the gold enters, the whole room stops apologising. A wall that has been quietly beige for years suddenly has a centre, and everything around it starts to look deliberate. Hang it in a living room above a low sideboard, on a hallway wall you walk past every day, or at the end of a dining room where the light drops off after 4pm. It gives dark corners something to do. Pair it with velvet or linen seating, dark wood, rattan and a few green glazed pots. Keep the wall around it plain clay, olive, deep teal or off-white all work. Don’t crowd it with busy patterned wallpaper or a shelf full of small ornaments; it needs breathing room to land. On fine-art paper the gold reads soft and slightly powdery rather than shiny.