A room of smooth surfaces reads as flat

Plaster, glass, painted wood, a flat-weave rug, a laminate top. Each is fine. All of them together produce a room with no shadow in it, and shadow is what the eye reads as depth.

Texture is the cheapest correction available. A loose-weave throw, a rug with pile, an unglazed ceramic, a linen curtain. None of these is a purchase decision on the scale of furniture and together they change the room more than another piece of furniture would.

Linen creases and that is the point. A linen cover or curtain that has been used looks intentional; a synthetic blend that refuses to crease looks new indefinitely, which sounds like a benefit and reads as sterile. If crumpling bothers you, linen is genuinely the wrong material and there is no technique that fixes it.

The same logic applies to timber finish. A close-grained, high-gloss surface reflects and disappears; an open-grained oiled one catches light across the grain and holds the eye. Neither is better in the abstract; a room needs some of both.

The test is to stand in the doorway with the overhead light off and one lamp on. If everything in the room is uniformly lit with no variation, it needs texture rather than more objects.