In Fort Worth or Dallas, putting a flat-panel wall bed into a 1920s house with stained original trim looks like a mistake, so we spend the conversation on species and stain matching. Richardson is the opposite. Much of the city went up between 1955 and 1975 with clean lines, low horizontal massing, and simple slab trim, and the plainest cabinets in our range sit in those rooms as though they were drawn with the house.

That is worth knowing before you shop, because it usually saves money. The models that suit Richardson best are not the ones with raised panels, crown, and heavy detail. A simple face in a single finish reads as deliberate here, and it costs less than the traditional cabinetry we specify for older Tarrant County houses.

The constraints are ordinary for the era: eight-foot ceilings almost everywhere, bedrooms sized for a bed and a dresser, and closets that were built when people owned fewer clothes. Horizontal folds come up often. The other steady stream is the Telecom Corridor and UT Dallas, which fill the city with home offices that need to sleep a visitor and rented houses where nothing can be drilled into the wall.