FURNISHING THE SUNROOM
The sunroom, though of ancient origin,[28] is a comparatively recent addition to the American home. Its rapid development doubtless is due to widening popular confidence in the therapeutic value of sunlight. Today's sunroom is in practice an informal lounging room which takes the place of the disappearing back parlor, and as such is a highly useful and important part of the home. Add the fact that it can be, and usually is, so decorated as to offer the relief of striking and colorful contrast to more conservatively furnished rooms, and we have ample reason for the popularity of this room in American houses. Many housewives whose homes contain small sunrooms do not know how to make them attractive, and many others apparently have no desire to do so. Often the room is a mere "catch-all" and final resting place for worn or outmoded furniture discarded from the other rooms.
Many homemakers who come to our stores for ideas on sunroom decoration either turn away to the decorators or big-city stores, or are promptly headed to low-priced merchandise, and leave with little more than two $6.75 reed or metal chairs, a small table, a fiber rug, a bridge lamp, a smoking stand, and a few yards of cretonne.
Salesmen must shift from emphasis upon the drab and commonplace to emphasis upon the distinctive. This will be easy, because persons who have sunrooms usually can well afford to pay for making them attractive. In every sale of sunroom merchandise, whether for a new house or an old, we must have the courage to point out that this room, potentially so large a factor in the comfort and enjoyment of the family, so much used by intimate guests, and so conspicuously placed as to be an open advertisement of the taste of its owners, should be furnished in a manner consistent with its proper importance. In order to convert this talk into profitable sales, we must of course have a stock of interesting ideas and suggestions on modern sunroom treatments.[29]
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
The sunroom should be comfortable, but colorful and stimulating. This will demand good furniture and well-sprung seating, careful arrangement for convenience without crowding, colorful textiles, good lighting, and interesting accessories.
Since the sunroom often is small and of irregular shape, it should be measured before furnishings are selected.
THE WALLS
It is common practice to find sunroom walls covered with bright and strikingly figured papers. Usually the effect is unpleasant because:
1. Such papers make the room seem smaller,
2. With windows on two or three sides of the room, such papers on the remaining wall spaces rob the room of balance,
3. Draperies or furniture coverings, or both, together with the necessary colorful accessories, give the room all the animation it can stand, and therefore make plain or simple wall treatment desirable.
Walls may be painted, papered, paneled in natural wood, or covered with one of the new cloth or wood-veneer fabrics.
THE FLOOR COVERINGS
For general considerations governing choice of floor coverings for the sunroom, see Furnishing the Hall, page [188].
Note as an exception that a plain carpet or large rug often is preferred to a figured carpet or rug in spite of a tendency to shade and the fact that it shows dust and ashes more easily because:
1. It offers a more effective background for gaily figured draperies and floor coverings.
2. The rich and unusual colors often desired for sunroom use are easier to find in plain carpetings.
WINDOW TREATMENTS
Some method of controlling natural light must be afforded by the window treatment. Venetian blinds are preferable for this purpose, because they can be adjusted instantly to the varying height of the sun; whereas moveable draperies, lined and interlined to make them opaque, either will exclude the light altogether when closed, or leave a band of bright light from top to bottom when partially closed.
Glass curtains are not always used on windows which have Venetian blinds and draperies. When such draperies are omitted, thin unlined curtains in a neutral or in a positive color are used alone. They should be made to draw, with sufficient material to provide double fullness when fully drawn.
Sunroom draperies may be of any material not too heavy to accord with the scale of the room or too elegant to accord with its decorative character and other furnishings. Choice among plain, simply figured, and strikingly figured fabrics will be governed by the size of the room and the amount of ornament in other surfaces.
THE SALE OF SUNROOM MERCHANDISE
Suggestions will be welcomed.—Although no new principles are involved in the sale of sunroom merchandise, the subject merits brief comment. A woman interested in home furnishings for any other room in her home is likely to have fairly definite ideas of her own, or least to be familiar with conventional methods of furnishing these rooms. This makes the salesman's talk one of discovering and interpreting her ideas, and helping to carry them out by means of his own merchandise. With the sunroom this is not often the case. It is relatively a new room, serving one purpose in one home, another in the second, and none at all in the third. Customers are likely to be open to suggestions, and to buy better merchandise and with less resistance, in the degree that these suggestions are clever and a little out of the ordinary.
This means that initiative and imagination are necessary to marked success in selling sunroom furnishings,[30] and that accordingly we must be alert both to gain ideas on sunroom treatments from books, magazines, and markets, and to study our own merchandise from the viewpoint of its possibilities for sunroom decoration.
SUNROOM TREATMENTS
The old days when reed and willow were top favorites for sunrooms has passed. Despite the fact that many beautiful styles in these materials are on the market, other types of furnishings have moved into the sunroom to augment and in many instances replace the old favorites.
Early American furniture in soft brown or honey-colored, maple, covered in chintz or printed linens, or in one of the many new textures developed for this type, is a happy choice for many sunrooms. Others are attractive when equipped with light-colored woods upholstered in lovely pastel fabrics. Chrome-steel furniture offers many opportunities for the sunroom as do bentwood, glass, enameled furniture, and rattan.
The sunroom offers an opportunity to sell such "plus" items as studio couches, sofa beds, standing bridge sets, radios, magazine racks, desks, and lamps. Since many sunrooms may be interpreted as an extension of the living room, these offer an opportunity to sell regular living room stock, upholstered chairs, a sofa or love seat, the necessary tables, lamps, and accessories.