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CHAPTER I
HOW TO REARRANGE A ROOM
Lucky is the man or woman of taste who has no inherited eyesores
which, because of association, must not be banished! When these exist
in large numbers one thing only remains to be done: look them over,
see to what period the majority belong, and proceed as if you wanted
a mid-Victorian, late Colonial or brass-bedstead room.
To rearrange a room successfully, begin by taking everything out of it
(in reality or in your mind), then decide how you want it to look, or
how, owing to what you own and must retain, you are obliged to have it
look. Design and colour of wall decorations, hangings, carpets,
lighting fixtures, lamps and ornaments on mantel, depend upon the
character of your furniture.
It is the mantel and its arrangement of ornaments that sound the
keynote upon first entering a room.
Conventional simplicity in number and arrangement of ornaments gives
balance and repose, hence dignity. Dignity once established, one can
afford to be individual, and introduce a riot of colours, provided
they are all in the same key. Luxurious cushions, soft rugs and a
hundred and one feminine touches will create atmosphere and knit
together the austere scheme of line—the anatomy of your room. Colour
and textiles are the flesh of interior decoration.
In furnishing a small room you can add greatly to its apparent size by
using plain paper and making the woodwork the same colour, or slightly
darker in tone. If you cannot find wall paper of exactly the colour
and shade you wish, it is often possible to use the wrong side of a
paper and produce exactly the desired effect.
In repapering old rooms with imperfect ceilings it is easy to disguise
this by using a paper with a small design in the same tone. A
perfectly plain ceiling paper will show every defect in the surface of
the ceiling.
If your house or flat is small you can gain a great effect of space
by keeping the same colour scheme throughout—that is, the same colour
or related colours. To make a small hall and each of several small
rooms on the same floor different in any pronounced way, is to cut up
your home into a restless, unmeaning checkerboard, where one feels
conscious of the walls and all limitations. The effect of restful
spaciousness may be obtained by taking the same small suite and
treating its walls, floors and draperies, as has been suggested, in
the same colour scheme or a scheme of related keys in colour. That is,
wood browns, beiges and yellows; violets, mauves and pinks; different
tones of greys; different tones of yellows, greens and blues.
Now having established your suite and hall all in one key, so that
there is absolutely no jarring note as one passes from room to room,
you may be sure of having achieved that most desirable of all
qualities in interior decoration—repose. We have seen the idea here
suggested carried out in small summer homes with most successful
results; the same colour used on walls and furniture, while exactly
the same chintz was employed in every bedroom, opening out of one
hall. By this means it was possible to give to a small, unimportant
cottage, a note of distinction otherwise quite impossible. Here,
however, let us say that, if the same chintz is to be used in every
room, it must be neutral in colour—a chintz in which the colour
scheme is, say, yellows in different tones, browns in different tones,
or greens or greys. To vary the character of each room, introduce
different colours in the furniture covers, the sofa-cushions and
lamp-shades. Our point is to urge the repetition of a main background
in a small group of rooms; but to escape monotony by planning that the
accessories in each room shall strike individual notes of decorative,
contrasting colour.
PLATE II
A room with modern painted furniture is shown here. Lines and
decorations Empire. Note the lyre backs of chairs and head board in day-bed.
Treatment of this bed is that suggested where twin beds are used
and room affords wall space for but one of them.
Bedroom in Country House. Modern Painted Furniture.
What to do with old floors is a question many of us have faced. If
your house has been built with floors of wide, common boards which
have become rough and separated by age, in some cases allowing dust to
sift through from the cellar, and you do not wish to go to the expense
of all-over carpets, you have the choice of several methods. The
simplest and least expensive is to paint or stain the floors. In this
case employ a floor painter and begin by removing all old paint.
Paint removers come for the purpose. Then have the floors planed to
make them even. Next, fill the cracks with putty. The most practical
method is to stain the floors some dark colour; mahogany, walnut,
weathered oak, black, green or any colour you may prefer, and then wax
them. This protects the colour. In a room where daintiness is desired,
and economy is not important, as for instance in a room with white
painted furniture, you may have white floors and a square carpet rug
of some plain dark toned velvet; or, if preferred, the painted border
may be in come delicate colour to match the wall paper. To resume, if
you like a dull finish, have the wax rubbed in at intervals, but if
you like a glossy background for rugs, use a heavy varnish after the
floors are coloured. This treatment we suggest for more or less formal
rooms. In bedrooms, put down an inexpensive filling as a background
for rugs, or should yours be a summer home, use straw matting.
For halls and dining-rooms a plain dark-coloured linoleum, costing not
less than two dollars a yard makes and inexpensive floor covering.
If it is waxed it becomes not only very durable but, also, extremely
effective, suggesting the dark tiles in Italian houses. We do not
advise the purchase of the linoleums which represent inlaid floors, as
they are invariably unsuccessful imitations.
If it is necessary to economise and your brass bedstead must be used
even though you dislike it, you can have it painted the colour of your
walls. It requires a number of coats. A soft pearl grey is good. Then
use a colour, or colours, in your silk or chintz bedspread. Sun-proof
material in a solid colour makes an attractive cover, with a narrow
fringe in several colours straight around the edges and also, forming
a circle or square on the top of the bed-cover.
If your gas or electric fixtures are ugly and you cannot afford more
attractive ones, buy very cheap, perfectly plain, ones and paint them
to match the walls, giving decorative value to them with coloured silk
shades.
PLATE III
Shows one end of a very small bedroom with modern painted
furniture, so simple in line and decoration that it would be
equally appropriate either for a young man or for a young woman.
We say "young," because there is something charmingly fresh and
youthful about this type of furniture.
The colour is pale pistache green, with mulberry lines, the same
combination of colours being repeated in painting the walls which
have a grey background lined with mulberry—the broad stripe—and
a narrow green line. The bed cover is mulberry, the lamp shade is
green with mulberry and grey in the fringe.
On the walls are delightful old prints framed in black glass with
gold lines, and a narrow moulding of gilded oak, an old style
revived.
A square of antique silk covers the night table, and the floor is
polished hard wood.
Here is your hall bedroom, the wee guest room in a flat, or the
extra guest room under the eaves of your country house, made
equally beguiling. The result of this artistic simplicity is a
restful sense of space.
Suggestion for Treatment of a Very Small Bedroom
If you wish to use twin beds and have not wall space for them, treat
one like a couch or day-bed. See Plate II. Your cabinet-maker can
remove the footboard, then draw the bed out into the room, place in a
position convenient to the light either by day or night, after which
put a cover of cretonne or silk over it and cushions of the same.
Never put a spotted material on a spotted material. If your couch or
sofa is done in a figured material of different colours, make your
sofa cushions of plain material to tone down the sofa. If the sofa is
a plain colour, then tone it up—make it more decorative by using
cushions of several colours.
If you like your room, but find it cold in atmosphere, try deep cream
gauze for sash curtains. They are wonderful atmosphere producers. The
advantage of two tiers of sash curtains (see Plate IX) is that one can
part and push back one tier for air, light or looking out, and still
use the other tier to modify the light in the room.
Another way to produce atmosphere in a cold room is to use a
tone-on-tone paper. That is, a paper striped in two depths of the same
colour. In choosing any wall paper it is imperative that you try a
large sample of it in the room for which it is intended, as the
reflection from a nearby building or brick wall can entirely change a
beautiful yellow into a thick mustard colour. How a wall paper looks
in the shop is no criterion. As stated sometimes the wrong side of
wall paper gives you the tone you desire.
When rearranging your room do not desecrate the few good antiques you
happen to own by the use of a too modern colour scheme. Have the
necessary modern pieces you have bought to supplement your treasures
stained or painted in a dull, dark colour in harmony with the
antiques, and then use subdued colours in the floor coverings,
curtains and cushions.
If you own no good old ornaments, try to get a few good shapes and
colours in inexpensive reproductions of the desired period.
If your room is small, and the bathroom opens out of it, add to the
size of the room by using the same colour scheme in the bathroom, and
conceal the plumbing and fixtures by a low screen. If the connecting
door is kept open, the effect is to enlarge greatly the appearance of
the small bedroom, whereas if the bedroom decorations are dark and the
bathroom has a light floor and walls, it abruptly cuts itself off and
emphasises the smallness of the bedroom.
Everything depends upon the appropriateness of the furniture to its
setting. We recall some much admired dining-room chairs in the home of
the Maclaines of Lochbuie in Argyleshire, west coast of Scotland. The
chairs in question are covered with sealskin from the seals caught off
that rugged coast. They are quite delightful in a remote country
house; but they would not be tolerated in London.
The question of placing photographs is not one to be treated lightly.
Remember, intimate photographs should be placed in intimate rooms,
while photographs of artists and all celebrities are appropriate for
the living room or library. It is extremely seldom that a photograph
unless of public interest is not out of place in a formal room.
To repeat, never forget that your house or flat is your home, and,
that to have any charm whatever of a personal sort, it must suggest
you—not simply the taste of a professional decorator. So work with
your decorator (if you prefer to employ one) by giving your personal
attention to styles and colours, and selecting those most sympathetic
to your own nature. Your architect will be grateful if you will show
the same interest in the details of building your home, rather than
assuming the attitude that you have engaged him in order to rid
yourself of such bother.
If you are building a pretentious house and decide upon some clearly
defined period of architecture, let us say, Georgian (English
eighteenth century) we would advise keeping your first floor mainly in
that period as to furniture and hangings, but upstairs let yourself
go, that is, make your rooms any style you like. Go in for a gay riot
of colour, such combinations as are known as Bakst colouring,—if that
happens to be your fancy. This Russian painter and designer was
fortunate in having the theatre in which to demonstrate his
experiments in vivid colour combinations, and sometimes we quite
forget that he was but one of many who have used sunset palettes.
PLATE IV
Here we have a man's office in Wall Street, New York, showing how
a lawyer with large interests surrounds himself with necessities
which contribute to his comfort, sense of beauty and art
instincts. The desk is big, solid and commodious, yet artistically unusual.
A Man's Office in Wall Street
Recently the fair butterfly daughters of a mother whose taste has
grown sophisticated, complained—"But, Mother, we dislike
periods, and here you are building a Tudor house!" forgetting, by
the way, that the so-called Bakst interiors, adored by them, are
equally a period.
This home, a very wonderful one, is being worked out on the plan
suggested, that is, the first floor is decorated in the period of the
exterior of the house, while the personal rooms on the upper floors
reflect, to a certain extent, the personality of their occupants.
Remember there must always be a certain relationship between all the
rooms in one suite, the relationship indicated by lines and a
background of the same, or a harmonising colour-scheme.
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