The Art of Interior Decoration | Page 4

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.
[Illustration: 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