Living on the top floor of an apartment building, we are always under threat of leaks from the roof above. Leak anxiety includes not only having the leak fixed (they can be tricky to locate), but repairing our drywall so that it looks like its older surroundings and not a crappy patch job (which invariably means painting the whole ceiling or wall).  Seeing photos of purposely distressed ceilings got us thinking: What if we did a fresco-like distressed ceiling / walls that would just get better from leak stains?

We saw the gist of the technique in a Mantova apartment featured in Remodelista recently: Apply water-based pigment to wet lime plaster; as the plaster dries, the pigment becomes part of the surface.

At Riad Mena and Beyond, outside of Marrakech, the distressed bathroom walls could cover a multitude of sins.

Wonder what our brilliant decorative painter friend Deirdre Newman would do?