How to Re-Arrange 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 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.

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.

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 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.

If you wish to use twin beds and have not wall space for them, treat

one like a couch or day-bed. 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.

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 he 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 t

he 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 happy 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.