Principles of Home Decoration, With Practical Examples

by Candace Wheeler

But a room where blue in all its shades from dark to light alone predominates, or a room where only green is used, bright and gray tones in contrast and variation is within the reach of most colour-loving mortals, and as both of these tints are companionable with oak and gold, and to be found in nearly all decoration materials, it is easy to arrange a refined and beautiful effect in either colour.

It will require little reflection to show that a hall skilfully treated with green or blue tints would modify the colour of sunlight, without giving a sense of discord. It would be like passing only from sunlight to grateful shadow, and this because in all art the actual representation shadow-colour would be blue or green. The shadow of a tree falling upon snow on a sunny winter day is blue. The shadow of a sunheated rock in summer is green, and the success of either of these schemes of decoration would be because of adherence to an actual principle of colour, or a knowledge of the peculiar qualities of certain colours and their proper use. It would be an intelligent application of the medicinal or healing qualities of colour to the constitution of the house, as skilful physicians use medicines to overcome constitutional defects or difficulties in man.

This may be called corrective treatment of a room, and may, of course, include all the decorative devices of ornament, design and furniture, and although it is not, strictly speaking, decoration, it should certainly and always precede decoration.

It is sad to see an elaborate scheme of ornament based upon bad colour-treatment, and unfortunately this not infrequently happens.

It is difficult to give a formula for the decoration of any room in relation to its colour-treatment, except by a careful description of certain successful examples, each one of which illustrates principles that may be of use to the amateur or student of the art.

One which occurs to me in this immediate connection is a dining-room in an apartment house, where this room alone is absolutely without what may be called exterior light. Its two windows open upon a well, the brick wall of which is scarcely ten feet away. Fortunately, it makes a part of the home of a much travelled and exceedingly cultivated pair of beings, the business of one being to create beauty in the way of pictures and the other of statues, so perhaps it is less than a wonder that this square, unattractive well-room should have blossomed under their hands into a dining-room perfect in colour, style, and fittings. I shall give only the result, the process being capable of infinite small variations.

At present it is a room sixteen feet square, one side of which is occupied by two nearly square windows. The wood-work, including a five-foot wainscot of small square panels, is painted a glittering varnished white which is warm in tone, but not creamy. The upper halves of the square windows are of semi-opaque yellow glass, veined and variable, but clear enough everywhere to admit a stained yellow light. Below these, thin yellow silk curtains cross each other, so that the whole window-space radiates yellow light. If we reflect that the colour of sunlight is yellow, we shall be able to see both the philosophy and the result of this treatment.

The wall above the wainscot is covered with a plain unbleached muslin, stencilled at the top in a repeating design of faint yellow tile-like squares which fade gradually into white at a foot below the ceiling. At intervals along the wall are water-colours of flat Holland meadows, or blue canals, balanced on either side by a blue delft plate, and in a corner near the window is a veritable blue porcelain stove, which once faintly warmed some far-off German interior. The floor is polished oak, as are the table and chairs. I purposely leave out all the accessories and devices of brass and silver, the quaint brass-framed mirrors, the ivy-encircled windows, the one or two great ferns, the choice blue table-furniture:—because these are personal and should neither be imitated or reduced to rules.

The lesson is in the use of yellow and white, accented with touches of blue, which converts a dark and perfectly cheerless room into a glitter of light and warmth.

The third example I shall give is of a dining-room which may be called palatial in size and effect, occupying the whole square wing of a well-known New York house. There are many things in this house in the way of furniture, pictures, historic bits of art in different lines, which would distinguish it among fine houses, but one particular room is, perhaps, as perfectly successful in richness of detail, picturesqueness of effect, and at the same time perfect appropriateness to time, place, and circumstances as is possible for any achievement of its kind. The dining-room, and its art, taken in detail, belongs to the Venetian school, but if its colour-effect were concentrated upon canvas, it would be known as a Rembrandt. There is the same rich shadow, covering a thousand gradations,—the same concentration of light, and the same liberal diffusion of warm and rich tones of colour. It is a grand room in space, as New York interiors go, being perhaps forty to fifty feet in breadth and length, with a height exactly proportioned to the space. It has had the advantage of separate creation—being "thought out" years after the early period of the house, and is, consequently, a concrete result of study, travel, and opportunities, such as few families are privileged to experience. Aside from the perfect proportions of the room, it is not difficult to analyse the art which makes it so distinguished an example of decoration of space, and decide wherein lies its especial charm. It is undoubtedly that of colour, although this is based upon a detail so perfect, that one hesitates to give it predominant credit. The whole, or nearly the whole west end of the room is thrown into one vast, slightly projecting window of clear leaded glass, the lines of which stand against the light like a weaving of spiders' webs. There is a border of various tints at its edge, which softens it into the brown shadow of the room, and the centre of each large sash is marked by a shield-like ornament glowing with colour like a jewel. The long ceiling and high wainscoting melt away from this leaded window in a perspective of wonderfully carved planes of antique oak, catching the light on lines and points of projection and quenching it in hollows of relief.