Living with lime
What a lime-plastered wall actually asks of you, and why we keep specifying it anyway.
Lime is not a low-maintenance finish, and any studio that tells you otherwise has not lived with it. It marks. It takes a knock badly at a corner. In a house with young children it will acquire a record of the first few years.
It is also the only wall finish we know that improves with light rather than merely tolerating it. Because it is applied in thin coats and burnished, it holds depth — a lime wall at four in the afternoon looks nothing like the same wall at ten in the morning. Paint cannot do this.
The practical guidance is short: no chemical cleaners, a soft dry cloth, and a lime specialist every six or seven years for any patching. Accept the marks in between. They are the difference between a wall and a surface.