Decorating Apartments - Color Ideas

Decorating Apartments - Color Ideas

If the life of the family is served to better advantage by living in an apartment of many small rooms, much can be done by the selection and arrangement of furniture to create a sense of space and at the same time to make apartment interiors of distinctive charm and personality.

A room may be appreciably enlarged by keeping the walls light in tone and having as little furniture as is necessary. This is particularly true of a dining room or bedroom.

Also, if the furniture is kept dark in tone, it will appear smaller.

This is the general rule to assure the utmost sense of space in decorating for apartments : Keep the walls light and the furniture dark. One has only to imagine a dark, contracting wall and light, large pieces of furniture before it, to visualize the contrary of this rule.

Light gray, buff and white walls are the best for apartments, since they give the appearance of expanding the room and because they reflect the greatest possible amount of light, a valuable feature in the general run of apartments where several rooms may depend for their outside light upon a court.

There seems to be a tendency to paper the halls of apartments in dark tones. This is unfortunate, as we get a general sense of contracted space immediately upon entering the apartment. The hall walls should be light in tone and the furnishings should be meager, with no cluttering pieces over which one can stumble and bump. A good six-foot mirror, facing a door, reflects the space beyond to a desirable extent. In a dark apartment hall I think the floor covering should be light, a reverse of the general rule, because a dark floor gives an unpleasant feeling of the necessity for groping around into the unseen depths with one's feet, never knowing where one will trip. The walls of adjoining rooms in an apartment should be papered or painted alike, since this adds to the apparent size. The woodwork being of nearly the same tone, there is no broken color space to cut up the walls. Here may arise the question of the suitability of placing heavy furniture against light backgrounds.

There are two ways of overcoming this and at the same time preserving a sense of space. Panel the walls in large spaces. This immediately gives a more solid appearance to the walls and adds strength of line. Also, the carpet or rug may be darker in tone than the furniture. This will "hold down" the heavier pieces of furniture. For example, in a living room where the walls were paneled in large spaces of light cream tone, the curtains were green taffeta with yellow trimming and the furniture was upholstered in mulberry. A dark, thick napped rug of deep mulberry was laid on the floor to offset a walnut refectory table and a fairly large size Italian desk of walnut Had the floor been carpeted in soft yellow, as originally planned, these two pieces would have looked out of scale in the room. The carpet struck the darkest note necessary in that interior.

Often the mistake is made of papering the inside room, used as a guest room, in gray. The room itself gets no direct sunlight, and while gray ordinarily would make the room look larger, it does not make it look cheery. Simulate sunlight, then, by using a light yellow paper and letting the wan court light filter through thin yellow curtains.

Such a room might have a delicate striped yellow paper with a tiny border of yellow and mauve. The twin beds could be painted yellow and striped in lavender. The furniture, designed to accommodate two persons, should be selected with a view of economizing on space a chiffonier, a wardrobe, a night stand, two straight chairs and a dressing table painted and striped to match the beds. A small upholstered chair and a wicker easy chair upholstered in a linen to match the hangings and bedcovers, would prove adequate additions. There should always be one or two easy chairs in a guest room. A floral striped cretonne of cream background with yellow and lavender bouquets gives a smart freshness to such a room. The rug can be deep tone plain lavender. The furniture of this bedroom is inexpensive, of simple line and light construction.

In an apartment I know of there was a double door which was of no use in the bedroom, but about which a graceful bed drapery was evolved. The bed, which had low foot and head boards, was placed lengthwise in front of the door. The entire wood trim of the door was covered up by a straight valance of blue taffeta sewed on to a valance board the width of the door, and from either end hung curtains. The curtains were unlined, the inch hem being turned on the right side. A double narrow ruffle was inserted, turning back on the curtain. Where the ruffle was attached to the hem was a tiny piping of dull yellow. At the back of the bed, hanging in long, straight folds from the valance board to the floor, was soft colored, yellow sateen. Over the bed was a taffeta bedcover of the same blue piped with yellow and the down bolster was flat and oval and ended in a long tassel of blue and yellow. The bed was painted and antiqued in blue with a tiny line of yellow. The same painting was on the other furniture, and the drapery of the bed corresponded with the drapery of the single, large window, thus balancing the room. The one upholstered chair was in a tiny yellow and blue striped velvet. At the window was an under-hanging of light blue-green gauze. The walls were light gray and on the floor was a rug of the deepest plum. The secret of the economy of space in this room was the placing of the bed against the wall, instead of placing it out in the room.

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