Color in the American Home
Yes, color has done wonders for the American home! Not only for the kitchen but for all rooms. Gone are the horsehair furniture which used to grace our “parlors,” and the atrocious “doo-dads” which formerly cluttered up our dining rooms and the nightmarish appointments of our childhood bedrooms!
Doing Away with Gloomy Colors
We’ve done away with the gloomy, characterless blacks and whites, browns and grays which used to make our rooms so cheerless, so unlivable.
Color is Character
Color, you see, makes character. And a room can have a personality as well as a person. Not only that— but a room should reflect the personality of the people who live in it. Color is the medium which expresses this personality.
Selecting Proper Colors
But selecting the proper colors for walls, woodwork, and furniture is no easy task. “What colors shall I use? Which colors combine most favorably?” “Where should I use more color, where less?” These are the questions which must be answered expertly, lest our choice of colors result in a decorative scheme that is even more unattractive to our modern taste than the Victorian furnishings of the long-ago past.
The Background
Have you ever moved from one house to another and noticed the tremendous effect the new background (walls, woodwork, floor) has upon your furnishings? The old furnishings never look the same in the new setting, do they?
The Effect of Background
Sometimes they appear to better advantage, sometimes worse—all depending upon how they are framed by the background.
Planning the Use of Color
The first consideration, then, in planning the use of color in your room, is the background—in other words, the walls, the woodwork, the floors.
Selecting Furnishings
From a decorative point of view, it would be better, of course, to select our furnishings after the background has been decided upon. However, that is not always possible. We cannot very well buy entirely new sets of furnishings whenever our decorative tastes change.
Changing Basic Colors
But we can change the basic colors of our walls, woodwork and floors. And for that reason, we must work from the unchangeable furnishings.
How to Start
First, take stock of what furnishings cannot be changed such as the chief pieces of furniture, the large rugs, perhaps the lamps and other expensive pieces. From them—from the character.