 |
|||||||||||||||||
Product Categories
|
TREATMENT AND COLOR OF WALLS Having settled upon a type of furniture, turn your attention to the walls. Always let the location of your room decide the color of its walls. The room with a sunny exposure may have any color you like, warm or cold, but your north room or any room more or less sunless, requires the warm, sun-producing yellows, pinks, apple-greens, beige and wood-colors, never the cold colors, such as greys, mauves, violets and blues, unless in combination with the warm tones. If it is your intention to hang pictures on the walls, use plain papers. Remember you must never put a spot on a spot!
The color of your walls once established, keep in mind two things: that to be agreeable to the artistic eye your ceilings must be lighter than your side-walls, and your floors darker. Broadly speaking, it is Nature's own arrangement, green trees and hillsides, the sky above, and the dark earth beneath our feet. A ceiling, if lighter in tone than the walls, gives a sense of airiness to a room. Floors, whether of exposed wood, completely carpeted, or covered by rugs, must be enough darker than your sidewalls to "hold down your room," as the decorators say. DECORATING WITH PICTURES The selecting of pictures for a room hinges first on their decorative value. That is, their color and size, and whether the subjects are appropriate and sympathetic. The decorative value of any picture when hung, is dependent upon its background, the height at which it is hung, its position with regard to the light, its juxtaposition to other pictures, and the character of those other pictures that is, their subjects, color and line. If you are buying pictures to hang in a picture gallery, there is nothing to consider beyond the attraction of the individual picture in mind. But if you are buying a picture to hang on the walls of a room which you are furnishing, you have first to consider it as pure decoration; that is, to ask yourself if in color, period and subject it carries out the idea of your room. A modern picture is usually out of place in a room furnished with antiques. In the same way a strictly modern room is not a good setting for an old picture, if toned by time. The crowding of walls with pictures is always bad; hang only as many as furnish thewalls, and have these on a line with the eye and when the pictures vary but slightly in size make a point of having either the tops of the frames or the bottoms on the same line,that is, an equal distance from floor or ceiling. If this rule is observed a sense of order and restfulness is communicated to the observer.
If one picture is hung over the other uniformity and balance must be preserved. One large picture may be balanced by two smaller ones. Hang your miniatures in a straight line across your wall, under a large picture or in a straight line one under the other, down a narrow wall panel. TREATING FIREPLACES Many otherwise attractive fireplaces are spoiled by using the wrong kind of tiles to frame them. Shiny, enamelled tiles in any color, are bad, and pressed red brick of the usual sort in equally bad, so if you are planning the fireplace of an informal room, choose tiles with a dull finish or brick with a simple roughfinish. In period rooms often beautiful light or heavy mouldings entirely frame the three sides of the fireplace when it is of wood. Well designed marble mantels are always desirable.
Let the fireplace be the centre of attraction in your room and draw about it comfortable chairs, sofas and settles,make it easy to enjoy its hospitable blaze. WHAT TO AVOID IN INTERIOR DECORATION Avoid crowding your rooms, walls or tables, for in creating a home one must producethe quality of restfulness by order and space. As to walls, do not use a cold color in a north or shaded room. Make your ceilings lighter in tone than the side walls, using a very pale shade of the same color as the side walls. Do not put a spotted (figured) surface on other spotted (figured) surfaces. A plain wallpaper is the proper, because most effective, background for pictures. Avoid too cheap materials for curtains or chair covers, as they will surely fade. Avoid too many small rugs in a room. This gives an impression of restless disorder and interferes with the architect's lines. Do not place your rugs at strange angles; but let them follow the lines of the walls. If your room has a long wall space, furnish it with a large cabinet or console, or a sofa and two chairs. If you have no good old ornaments, try to get a few good shapes and colors in inexpensive reproductions of the period to which your antiques belong.
HOW TO REARRANGE OR REDECORATE A 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 color of wall decorations, hangings, carpets, lighting fixtures, lamps and ornaments on mantel, depend upon the character of your furniture. If your house or suite is small you can gain a great effect of space by keeping the same color scheme throughout that is, the same color or related colors. 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 color scheme or a scheme of related keys in color. That is, woodbrowns, beiges and yellows; violets, mauves and pinks; different tones of greys; different tones of yellows, greens and blues. 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 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 color. 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 color. How a wall paper looks in the shop is no criterion. 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. Is your room small and have you made the woodwork a sharp contrast in color to yourwalls? You will find that in any room, to paint the wood-work the same color as walls adds immensely to the appearance of its size. Are your large pieces of furniture so placed as to give the appearance of balance to your room? And have you provided yourself with a sufficient number of easily moved pieces such as small tables and chairs, so as to form "groups" which suggest that human beings are expected to live in and enjoy this room! Is your desk where the light comes over your left shoulder to the page you are writing? Are the lights in the room where they will be of best use? Can you enjoy your open-fire and at the same time have a good light to read by? If you play cards can you light the table and also the hands of each player? Has your room for informal use books and enough of them! Books and an open-fire are the ideal foundation for a home-like room. See to it that your home, your room each one of them expresses the tastes of the family. This is how you make " atmosphere." It is wise to furnish slowly. Haste is responsible for most mistakes. Begin by owning good shapes and color-combinations, and as you can afford it, discard your things of no intrinsic value for beautiful shapes and colors with value. It is amazing what happy results one can get if one does not cling too firmly to the idea, often a fallacy, that some inherited curtains or rugs are "too good to dye." If you really want to master the secrets of how to decorate your home be prepared to let go of some of your long-cherished views. House furnishing which is beautiful need not cost any more than house furnishing which is ugly or simply dull and uninteresting. If you would decorate give in at once and agree to follow the rules of the game: let the laws of decoration dictate to you when it comes to the " composition" of the picture (your room) upon which you are working. Do you want to use only the furnishings you already own in the home you are about to arrange or will you use some of the old things and add new pieces or hangings! Or is your Idea to get rid of everything you have in order to make a fresh start with everything new? If only some of the old furnishings are to be kept and new ones bought to supplement these, the thing to keep in mind is that our choice when buying is limited by the possibilities of the old possessions. In such a case we advise first manipulating the old. When you have done all that can be done with them along the lines suggested ( re-framing simply the ornate mirrors on bureaus, and painting disfigured or discordant woods) go out and buy the new pieces of furniture, but select things which are related, in shape and general character, to the old pieces. The reader can see that what we aim at getting into a room is an effect of simplicity and restfulness. Begin your efforts at decorationg by having only the pieces of furniture you need in a room and not too many colors. Keep all your colors bright or all subdued; do not mix shades; a wrong shade of a color is like a false note in music. This is what is meant by having your " values" right when arranging a color scheme. Is your room full of little ornaments and the framed photographs of many friends? If so take all of these small things (possibly souvenirs of your travels) and intimate photographs out of the now crowded room and use only a very few of each at one time. Intimate photographs belong in intimate rooms and if you will keep them all together, say on the top of your book-shelves, you will be surprised how the arrangement improves the appearance of your room. It establishes order at once. Have you restful spaces between your pieces of furniture and are there some small tables with nothing on them, awaiting the unexpected need, as a vase of flowers, cigarettes, tea or after-dinner coffee cup? Remember that in any room which is attractive, simple or elaborate restful spaces and one or two small, empty tables are necessities. In music the rests have as much value as the notes. It is so in decoration. Is that impression of confusion one feels on entering your room due to the fact that your rugs are put down at different angles? Let them follow the lines of your walls. Is the design in carpets or rugs too pronounced? It should not be so. In the average home plain carpets or very inconspicuously figured rugs, which are in harmony with the color scheme are the things to choose. Keep all of the rugs in one room similar in coloring. Are the lighting fixtures, frames of pictures and of mirrors in keeping with style of your furniture! They should be. How about the pictures themselves! Are they appropriate for the room in which you have hung them! Are they good of their kind? Have you been careful about keeping similar subjects on one wall! Harmony in house furnishing is not difficult to understand, and if you never violate this principle when furnishing, your home will be beautiful whether its furnishings cost the lowest price possible or a fortune. You can see yourself that if you make the mistake of putting into an inexpensively furnished room some wonderful antique, inlaid desk or raretable, suited to a room of quite different character, you will utterly ruin your"picture". When you are beginning at the foundation and furnishing with entirely new things, your problems are fewer. But they exist. Don't make the mistake of thinking that decorating (even with endless money and time) can be successful if one starts in without a plan of action.
|
Shopping Basket
Note: All prices in US Dollars
|
|||||||||||||||
homedecorexperience@shaw.ca |
|||||||||||||||||
4. Lay An Area Rug- An area rug is a wonderful way of defining a conversation area. Try one that complements the room. Lay it at an angle beneath your coffee table.
8. Replace Lamps- Lamps are probably the one thing in your home that will give others a clue that your room is outdated. Seek out new and fresh lamps that make a statement. 
