large room proportions
small room proportions
ROOM PROPORTIONS
66. In small rooms harmonies of contrast are unsafe, because contrasts must involve advancing colors, which make a room look smaller. (See¶ 86and¶ 90.) Harmonies of analogy are far better; and as frieze, wainscoting and dado are not recommended in the small room, we suggest that the furniture woodwork and the wood trims should be of one color note, unless it is desired that the wood trims should be white; and that the side-walls, curtains and chair upholsterings should be of a note in some degree related and of receding color, picked out with just a touch of contrasting color. (See¶ 90 and ¶ 91.)
This contrasting color may be introduced in the accessories, the pictures, bric-à-brac, flowers (natural or artificial) or books.
“... pronounced patterns must balance,” etc.(See page38.)
Broken heights. (See¶ 75.)
DECORATIVE PROPORTIONS
(SEE CHART)
On the preceding pages we present a quick-reference chart of rules that should be followed in furnishing rooms under various conditions of Light and Proportion.
67. A large room with high ceiling and well lighted.68. A large room with low ceiling and well lighted.69. A large room with high ceiling and poorly lighted.70. A large room with low ceiling and poorly lighted.71. A small room with high ceiling and well lighted.72. A small room with low ceiling and well lighted.73. A small room with high ceiling and poorly lighted.74. A small room with low ceiling and poorly lighted.
There are two considerations to bear uppermost in mind: Proportions affected by Color and Proportions affected by Design.
75. It is easily understood that a large room may be safely furnished with large pieces of furniture, but where there is a wide expanse of floor space care must be exercised to secure broken heights: In a high-ceilinged room the furniture must not be all high; in a low-ceilinged room the furniture must not be all low.
Avoid straight line effects in the furniture heights and in the wall-paper, which, if in pronounced patterns, must balance in conspicuous wall members and show the broken junctures or bad matchings in inconspicuous or obscure corners.
COLORS THAT GIVE SIZE TO A ROOM
76. The wall and fabric designs must be of a size proportionate to the size of the room. The color treatment of a well-lighted room must be subdued to offset the glare of the natural illumination, and the natural illumination be subdued to soften the color treatment; glare must be avoided.
77. Advancing colors are colors which contain red or yellow in the ascendancy;recedingcolors are those which contain blue in the ascendancy. Green in its purity, being half yellow and half blue, is almost neutral. In the same way violet, being made up of half red and half blue, is theoretically neutral, although the blue tone is usually more assertive than the red and makes the color recede. Any color or hue possesses advancing or receding qualities according to the ascendancy of red, blue or yellow in its composition.
78. Orange is an advancing color; so also is violet in the shades approaching red; green in the shades approaching yellow.
79. Of the tertiary colors russet is an advancing color, because while it contains some blue in the violet of its composition, it contains a preponderance of red and orange.
ADVANCING AND RECEDING COLORS
80. Citrine is an advancing color, because while it contains some blue in the green of its composition, it contains a preponderance of yellow and orange; slate is a receding color, because while it contains some yellow in the green of its composition, it contains a preponderance of blue; in the same way plum may be regarded as an advancing color, because of its preponderance of red; buff is an advancing color, because of its preponderance of yellow; sage is a receding color, because of its preponderance of blue.
81. The carpet should always be in the low tone, and in a small room a bordered carpet should be always tabooed. So also should one avoid the use of one rug so placed that a border of woodwork shows around it, because this gives the border effect and makes a small floor space look still smaller. Better use small rugs. The use of a lot of narrow rugs lengthwise along a narrow room will make the room look all the narrower, but the same rugs placed crosswise would make a room look wider.
The diagrams which we have prepared will give even the man who understands it all a quicker grasp of the points involved.
82. Width effect and distance effect are obtained best by arranging the smaller pieces at the farthest points.
83. It is the same with pictures. While a room should be balanced, and the pictures placed in a manner to give this result, it is best, where possible, tokeep the larger pictures, larger effects, always near the eye. The crowding of large pieces at the farthest point diminishes the apparent size of the room.
FLOOR TREATMENTS
floor rug
84. Continuous design in ceiling or carpet weakens the size effect; hence rugs which break the continuity by being laid across the room instead of lengthwise are preferable. (See Diagrams and¶ 81.)
85. It is a safe rule to do a small or narrow room in harmonies of analogy or related colors, colors of a light tone and of receding character. Apart from any effect which color may possess decoratively or pictorially, its value cannot be overestimated in its application to the laws of proportion.
floor rugs
86. Borders may be safely used on the wall or on the carpet of any large room with high ceiling, but wall friezes should be avoided where the ceilings are low, for they foreshorten the height effect.
87. We would avoid borders on the floor of a small room to make it look larger, and we would use wide borders in a large room with a low ceiling so that the floor may be foreshortened.
88. One may utilize in a large, poorly lighted room masses of luminous colors to give artificial sunlight to the room deficient therein, but in the small, poorly lighted room this treatment should be avoided.
COLOR SCHEMES FOR ROOMS UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS
(TN: left page of two page table)
KEYNOTECOLORSABABABFloorDraperyBorderWood TrimWainscotingSide-WallFurnitureCoverings(Brown andgray tones)(Full tones)(Wood tones)(Deep tones)(Soft tones)(Soft tones)BrownYellowMissionGreenRedGreenDeep oakbrownOrangeMissionBlueOrangeBlueLight oakGreenLight oakVioletYellowVioletDeep oliveBlueOakRedGreenRedMission tonesof slateVioletMahoganyOrangeBlueOrangeDeep plumRedViolet tonedor tulipYellowVioletYellow
(TN: right page of two page table)
ABABAFurnitureFriezeDraperiesCeilingCornice(Wood tones)(Soft tones)(Full tones)(Pale wash tones)(Pale wash tones)MahoganyPale greenRedPalest greenPale yellowDeep oakBlueOrangePalest bluePale greenGold, gray oryellowVioletYellowPalest violetPale blueWalnut grayGrayish redGreenPalest redPale violetMission brownGray orangeBluePalest orangePale orangeGold or violettoneYellowVioletPalest yellowPale pink
Exception 1. The ceiling, where there is no pronounced cornice or cove, should follow the wall tint.
Exception 2. Independent of rule, a low ceiling should be in receding color.
It is impossible to tabulate directions for using color without an understanding of the conditions, the size, light and height of a room. (See pages34 and 35.) The above tables relate only to normal conditions.
White woodwork can be used effectively in the trims of a room and give greater light and size. The darker the wood trims the smaller the room appears. We have left out of consideration the window treatments which, as a rule, should be of white lace, perhaps overdraped in colored stuffs. If the room is poorly lighted, it is obviously undesirable to cut off any light from the window by even laces; the curtains, therefore, in a poorly lighted room should be draped back. Colored laces, grenadines or madras stuffs are frequently used to give period style or color tone, andwherever they are used, such curtains should harmonize with the wall. So also with the overdraperies to the lace curtains.
89. Luminous or advancing colors make a small room look all the smaller; therefore in small rooms we suggest the use of white woodwork, and in the color treatment we would avoid contrasts, but would suggest harmonies of analogy in receding colors, soft grays, greens and blues. These are not luminous colors and will make a small room look the larger, while the white will give light effects, and if the room appears a trifle somber it can be easily relieved bythe bright colors of the bric-à-brac and by a touch of gold here and there on the wall. (See¶ 66and¶ 85.)
90. There are cases where a small room has a northern exposure, and while apparently expedient to treat such a room in warm colors to supply the deficiency of sunlight, such a course would make a room look smaller.
91. Under the circumstances treat the room in light hues, gray preferred, and get the deficiency of sunlight through some warm isolated details and in the lace curtains.
THE WALL THE KEYNOTE COLOR
92. Our theory of color as applied to room furnishings provides always that the side-wall is the keynote and this keynote is usually fixed for practical reasons in sympathy with the furniture; above to the ceiling’s center the note ascends and below to the floor center it descends; it goes into tints as it ascends and into deeper shades of gray and brown as it descends.
If, for instance, blue is the keynote, by adding black you have drabs, slates or grays for the floor, while if the keynote be red you have écrus and browns for the floor light or gray, according to the color scale of the keynote.
93. It must be understood that in designating a color we do not mean that it shall be solid or pure, but merely that it prevails. (See¶ 29.)
A side-wall may be treated in several colors, but as long as orange prevails, it follows the conditions ofthe combination, pages42 and 43. The factors included in the line designated A are all of one color family. The factors indicated by B are also family colors. It will be seen that the A or B colors taken by themselves formharmonies of analogy; it is only by combining the A’s with the B’s that we haveharmonies of contrast.
If a room is to be done in harmonies of analogy, use the A colors alone or the B colors alone, but never A and B together.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLOR
94. Whatever may be the charm conveyed by design there is a reason for it. We can analyze it.
It has an inherent quality of beauty or historic interest, and there is a definite and distinct reason for our liking it.
But the effect of color is exciting or disturbing, tranquilizing or pleasing, inexplicable and inexpressible, affecting the senses like an appeal to the passions or the appetite. One might as well explain the love of sport, literature, art or vice. The sense of color is a nerve sense, and this sense varies in the individual. We know that colors which are strongest in direct sun rays, like red and orange, arouse the normal senses, while the blues and violets quiet.
Nature provides vast fields of green because favorable in its effects upon humanity. Experiments prove that men of extreme sensibility exposed to the influences of red light finally show excitement which gives muscular development fifty per cent. in excess of the power possessed by the same subject whenexposed for the same period under the influences of blue light.
TO DETERMINE THE COLOR SENSE
Color, like music, while subjected to positive rules of harmony, appeals to natures according to the responsiveness of their nerve sense, and the practical decorator in dealing with a customer should discover at the outstart the character of that nerve sense. Some natures respond to the normal colors, barbaric colors. Some respond to the softer tints and are disturbed by the sharper tones. A dulled sense requires sharp contrasts; a quickened sense is satisfied with the soft gray tones. Apart from any question of propriety or environment the individual taste for color must be determined before the individual taste can be pleased.
A demonstration of four examples in color may serve the purpose of determining one’s color sense.
First. Combinations of normal primary and secondary colors, (a) arranged in contrasts, (b) in analogies.
Second. Combinations of tones of the above colors, (a) arranged in contrasts, (b) in analogies.
Third. Combinations of tints of the above colors, (a) arranged in contrasts, (b) in analogies.
Fourth. Combinations of the gray (tertiary) tones of the above colors, (a) arranged in contrasts, (b) in analogies.
95. Do not allow your personal color-sympathies to dominate your work. All colors have their usefulness, for there are occasions when it is proper theyshould be used, apart from any question of harmony; one must consider always the uses of colors, the lights, and the purpose of the room under treatment.
96. Nature gives to the dark forest depths great brilliancy of floriculture, and dark-skinned people indulge unconsciously the same bright scale of color. But as we come out of the forest and advance in civilization we use barbaric colorings more discriminately.
97. We employ gold, orange or yellow for the north room not for inherent beauty, but for the sense of warmth which they convey to an atmosphere chilled by the absence of sunlight. We employ receding colors in a small room that the room may look larger. We employ cold colors in a sunny room, especially in the summer home, for reasons psychological rather than æsthetic.
PERIOD USES OF COLOR
98. If our furniture is white and gold, it is clearly evident that the colorings of a room should be soft and harmonious. If we adopt the dark teakwood of India or the deep brown of Flanders, our color scheme again changes. The preponderance of white in Colonial rooms was due to architectural conditions. White illuminates; and in the days when our ceilings were no higher than seven and a half feet, and our windows were small, the room needed an artificial light, and white supplied this.
99. In furnishing an Empire room, the decorators have, little by little, led themselves to believe thatwhat is known as Empire green is a distinct shade of green. On the contrary, green was used in the period of the Empire simply because it was in pleasing contrast with the mahogany and brass so much used. If the mahogany is dark, a dark green is desirable; if light, a light green.
100. Egyptian decoration was full of gold and brilliant coloring, and a popular form of combination was the triad form:
Black, yellow and red.Red, blue and white.Dark blue, light blue and white.Cream color, blue and black.Dark red, medium yellow and blue.
101. The Greek decorators, who painted in fresco, used white, red, blue, yellow and black. Natural marbles were much used in green and red and alabaster, and bronze, gold and silver.
We see the flat colors of the Greek, Etruscan and Pompeiian age and we imagine they are typical of the period, but we must consider that the examples of that period which we now possess are faded and emasculated, and that the more authentic the example, the more aged it is, and hence the more weakened in color character.
The Greeks loved color, and their embroideries were in gold and blue and Tyrian purple.
Roman coloring was but a continuance of the Greek, characterized by dark and rich backgrounds, which were frequently black, red or deep yellow anddark blue, on which figures and landscapes, or animals, or groups from still life, were executed in bright colorings of powerful contrasts. Black and white were used, and later, when the Byzantine artists and craftsmen found their way to Western Italy, they spread this love of bold coloring, so that at the dawn of the Renaissance we find a return to the Greek and Roman coloring, which, however, was modified in England, Germany and Flanders, according to temperamental conditions.
102. We find, for instance, some forms of Florentine decoration, full of yellow, red-yellow, blue-greens and light slate blues. Botticelli used whites, creams, reds and citrine, with umber tones heightened by gold, and if we examine carefully the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Italian brocades which are preserved in the museums, we discover a great preponderance of yellow-green as an ornament on dark violet, or light olive green on dark blue, or dull orange on crimson brown.
In some of the richest early Italian fabrics we find:
Purple and sage-green ornaments on indigo ground; outlines in gold.Dull crimson, pale blue and chrome yellow ornaments on dark gray ground.Pale yellow-green ornaments on deep amber ground.Dark blue-green and light greenish-yellow ornaments on deep crimson ground.Pale greenish-blue ornaments on dark gray-blue ground, with white and gold picked out in small quantities.Emerald green and dull orange ornaments on dark gray-green ground outlined in gold.
Purple and sage-green ornaments on indigo ground; outlines in gold.
Dull crimson, pale blue and chrome yellow ornaments on dark gray ground.
Pale yellow-green ornaments on deep amber ground.
Dark blue-green and light greenish-yellow ornaments on deep crimson ground.
Pale greenish-blue ornaments on dark gray-blue ground, with white and gold picked out in small quantities.
Emerald green and dull orange ornaments on dark gray-green ground outlined in gold.
103. The French Renaissance takes inspiration from the Roman and Greek.
The Louis XIV is a development of the Renaissance, with a conspicuous use of gold.
The Louis XV is an elaboration along the same lines.
The Louis XVI is a simplification and a return to the classic.
The Georgian is largely Roman and Pompeiian.
104. The Adam style was taken directly from the Pompeiian, but in most cases, instead of having the Pompeiian solid color background with design lightly executed, the background is in the light color, and the design dark. To follow strictly the Pompeiian palace style would be too garish in our modern circumscribed environment.
105. It is a nice psychological problem to decorate the house in a way to give true balance to the æsthetic sense. No matter how great one’s admiration for a thing, there is always a final point of satiety at which the desire needs rest or balance. A woman may love flowers, for example, but in the season of flowers, when all nature supplies an over-abundance, the visual sense becomes satiated, and the house interior that is furnished in cool tints and two-tones gives positive relief.
106. On the other hand, floral decorations in the home are the balance needed to the mind that craves them during the Winter period when there is a lack of color without.
Compare perpendicular and horizontal lines: The anglesand curves which enclose them change their relative equality.
ILLUSION EFFECT AND EXPRESSION IN THE USE OF LINES
107. We very often notice a room which has been carefully carried out but is utterly lacking in charm. The color seems right, and, considered in detail, the furniture and the furnishings are appropriate, but the room lacks effectiveness.
It is uninteresting.
It is like a doll face that is, perhaps, perfect in detail, but utterly devoid ofexpression.
The artist who paints a portrait is a failure without the ability to give expression: hence inarchitecture the acute-angled spires or arched roofs have the same expression that the “long face” carries.
If we smile, the mouth curves upward; if we grieve, the lines turn downward.
108. In festival decorations, joy is expressed by loops, curves and festoons.
109. In serious decorations (libraries, studies, church or office work) straight lines are used; curtains are gathered in plaits so that the sags and drapes are all out of them; they are drawn. It is the same when we say of a person: “He looks serious, his face is drawn; it is full of lines.”
110. The observation, “a broad smile on his face,”means literally just that; the lines extend outward and upward, giving an expression of breadth and joy to the countenance.
ILLUSION
111. A doorway looks wider that has at the top a drapery which crosses in one complete curved sweep. A side-wall is larger apparently if along the frieze line long, wide loops or festoons are arranged. The same wall is more contracted and higher if treated in arrow-point forms of design.
The decorator should study these matters ofillusion, for they are vital to the success of his labor. (See¶ 116.)
112. Perpendicular lines contract the wall space and extend the apparent height of a room; horizontal lines shorten the apparent height of the ceiling and lengthen the width of the room. (See exceptions,¶ 119.)
These straight lines may be used where extremes are needed. (See pages61and63.)
A short doorway, for instance, looks higher where the portière is hung in straight folds; so also with a cottage window.
113. Every decorator who handles fabrics, every cabinetmaker who lays out the woodwork of a room, every stained glass window maker, should appreciate one fact: A line which is finished at the top orbottom, or both, with acute angles appears longer than the line that is finished top and bottom with an obtuse or right angle. It is the same with the finish of a wall frieze.
If the wall frieze ends abruptly (Illustration Aon page 57), it is foreshortened; if it is finished by angles (Illustration B), the height of the room is apparently greater. (See the illustration on page51.)
114. It is the same way with curves; given two lines of equal length and enclose one with convex and the other with concave curves, and the line enclosed convex will appear longer.
Treated for Broken Heights.
115. In dress a collar brought down to an acute angle in the front of the waist gives height effect, whereas a perfectly straight collar around the neck reduces the apparent height and gives width effect.
116. The use of arches should be studied. A space that is arched looks wider than it actually is, for the eye unconsciously follows the lines of the arch, and a distance or width effect is the result. The same space treated with a straight line is quickly bridged. The same space treated with lines that come to an angle looks narrower, for the reason that the eye becomes focused by the apex of the angle, and a height effect, not a breadth effect, is the result. (See page57.)
117. This illusion is best shown in the illustrations of the parallel lines that are crossed diagonally, with the result that the lines no longer look parallel because of the angles. Nevertheless, they are parallel, and the lines running diagonally at the bottom of this page are also parallel.
We present two practical illustrations of illusion in the use of lines. (See¶ 112.) They represent the side-walls of two rooms of the same dimensions, but showing apparently different proportions, the perpendicular lines making the side-wall look higher and the horizontal lines making the side-wall look lower. (See page59.)
Illustration A.
Illustration B. (See¶ 113.)
The length of the wall space is shortened, moreover, by the perpendicular lines and lengthened by the horizontal lines.
118. No period expresses more clearly the joy of curves as opposed to the severity of straight lines than that voluptuous period of Louis XV known as Rococo. It was a profligate era, an era of pleasure, and the appended illustration of part of a frieze is in no way exaggerated, but a true example of a common expression. (See page60.)
119. Distinct perpendicular lines give height effect, but they also narrow the apparent width of a wall space. It is best to have such line effects indistinct unless they appear as in the illustration on page63, where they are intended to reduce the breadth effect of the pattern and neutralize a squat tendency.
Indistinct perpendiculars give height effect, and do not reduce the wall width.
(See¶ 111.)
Perpendicular lines, giving height effect.
Perpendicular lines, giving height effect.
COLOR TERMS
120. In the study of color and its application authorities differ so materially that it is not only impossible to reconcile their theories, but the different terms used to express color thought create inextricable confusion.
121. One authority fixes the neutrals as being black, gray and white; another regards them as those hues or tones which lack definite color, like quaternaries. Authorities differ, moreover, upon even the fundamental principles. Chevreuil selects red, yellow and blue as the primaries; Dr. Thomas Young selects red, green and violet. Helmholtz selects carmine, pale green and blue-violet; Maxwell scarlet red, emerald green and blue-violet; Professor Rood agrees with Maxwell; Professor Church, of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, regards the primaries as red, green and blue; George Hurst, the English authority, fixes upon red, yellow and blue, the Brewsterian theory.
122. One must remember always in studying color that we are treating with the material, not with the illusion. We are dealing with pigments, not with prismatic phenomena, and it must be obvious that the only three primary colors that can be used in a way to produce all other colors are red, yellow and blue.
123. Whatever may be the spectrum theories of Sir Isaac Newton, Young or Helmholtz, for practical reasons we prefer to follow an authority as eminent as Chevreuil, for years the head of the National Gobelin Works of France, and a man experienced in thepractice as well as the theory of color. Any effort to fix the character of color and describe it by periods and epochs will always prove unsatisfactory, for the reason that terms and expressions have changed with every period since the Egyptian, 4000 B.C.
124. We think we know purple until we discover that the purple of royalty, the ermine and purple, the purple of the cardinals’ robes, frequently approximated what we now call carmine. Royal purple and Venetian blue are mere trade terms. Practical men in the purchase of things decorative soon discover that color terms convey only individual impressions and no distinctive qualities that may be relied upon; so that any effort to fix the color value by periods would be futile. We may assume that in the age of oak, mahogany, white and gold or walnut furniture, the fabric and wall colors harmonized with the wood colors, and to that degree we may fix the period character of color. The moment that the tone of the woodwork or the light conditions varied, color character varied also.
125. We must also bear well in mind that colors which have come down to us as examples of ancient times have been subjected to the changing influences of centuries, and have faded and altered. The colors on the walls of the historic rooms of European palaces have greatly altered. The flat reds and the deadish blues of the Pompeiian frescoes have been altered by chemical action during the 1,850 years’ burial under the lava of Vesuvius. We are not justified in judgingof the colors of A.D. 79 by the restoration-examples in 1900. Hence the mere expressions Pompeiian red, Pompeiian blue, can convey no definite, positive meaning.