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,