Texturing and 'distressed effects'

I think I've said elsewhere that i was trying to stay fairly close to flay colour, in keeping with the work of my subject. I had discussed with the tutor applying and aged or distressed overlay to the pages, and I've begun experimenting with this.

​First of all I searched online for free to use textures. I found this plaster effect, which I thought would work because of the number of interior scenes with relatively blank space.

In the page below I tried two different things: the top panel has the plaster texture over the rear wall in straight greyscale. I would need to choose between approaches here - either make it the texture of the wall, and so remove it from the figures, or just use it as a texture over everything. I've done the latter on the lower two panels, where I also changed the plaster image to a brown colour. This works fairly well over everything - it's quite subtle, and adds a bit of visual variety. The brown works here as a contrast to the green of the background, it might not works so well on the (majority of) scenes with brownish walls. I could probably change the colour of the plaster texture for individual scenes, without it being noticeable to the average reader. In each case the plaster texture is at 30% opacity

The next question this raise is - should the texture be over the gutters and page borders? If so would it need a subtle flat colour over all the white areas?

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I then tried a 'distressed' texture, as seen below. This, in contrast to the subtle tones of the plaster texture, was more high contrast black and white. ​

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I converted this into an ochre colour, and overlaid it on the page below at about 10% opacity. Here I extended it over the white border and gutters. This scene is a the bedroom of a very rich man with a new young wife, so it won't make sense if it looks like the room is shabby - it needs to be clear it's the picture.

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Here's a further version, which adds a high contrast version of the plaster image, and a cream/paper colour underneath the colour flats layer. I think the cream improves the effect on the 'white' areas, and the extra texture softemns the overall effect

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I also worked with the distressed image, using the magic wand an fill tools, to add a cream/ochre overly, that omitted areas, leaving some useful whites, as below.

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I the overlaid this on a page, as shown below.

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I'm undecided about the one above: the texture layer on it's own looks aesthetic, but overlaid on a page the distressed marks are perhaps too noticeable in places and too subtle in others. It looks like marble though - which would make it work well on the tiled floors.