Decorating with Color for Large Rooms Visualize these three rooms, and you will discover that they are held together by the uniform background color, whereas the color scheme of each room is different and individual, and in each is repeated, in small quantity, the color of the adjoining room. The effect is pleasing and more restful and space-affording than if each room had been treated as an entirely separate unit in color. No particular stress has been laid upon the background ; it is merely harmonious for each individual scheme of furnishing. Again we may have an enormous room which looks barren and cold, the walls in blue-gray and the furnishings in dull drab. We see such rooms all over Europe in the pensions which once, perhaps, were regal apartments, but whose only asset of regality left to this day is good proportion. The room may be transformed by proper "coloring up". The walls may be done in yellowish brown paper, the hangings in rich brown velour (or rep), and the furniture upholstered in figured cretonne combining deep and bright shades of green with a bit of Venetian red. Use well polished copper or brass jars or bowls to reflect and draw together the various lights and shadows. Thus the colors are closely related and the room is brought together, enriched and warmed. In country houses there is often this problem of bringing a room together, making large rooms more intimate by the selection of color. But it should be remembered that we can stand a more open, impersonal sense of space in the country than in the city. Summing up the principles of the foregoing examples, we find that light colors enlarge and deep colors contract a room; that browns, reds, deep blues, deep green and black make a room look smaller; whereas the lighter shadestans, grays, light greens, blue and roseexpand it. Remembering these simple facts we can readily remedy a room that appears too large or too small. Next Page: Color Combinations for Decorating. |
