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Avoid crowding your rooms, walls or
tables, for in creating a home one must produce the quality of restfulness
by order and space.
As to walls, do not use a cold color in a
north or shaded room. Make your ceilings lighter in tone than the
sidewalls, using a very pale shade of the same color as the sidewalls.
Do not put a spotted (figured) surface on
other spotted (figured) surfaces. A plain wallpaper is the proper, because
most effective, background for pictures.
Avoid the mistake of forgetting that table
decoration includes all china, glass, silver and linen used in serving any
meal. In attempting the decoration of your dining-room table avoid
anything inappropriate to the particular meal to be served and the scale
of service. Do not have too many flowers on your table, or flowers not in
harmony with the rest of the setting, in variety or color.
Do not use peasant china, no matter how
decorative in itself, on fine damask or rare lace. By so doing you strike
a false note. The background it demands is crash or peasant lace.
Avoid crowding your dining table or giving
it an air of confusion by the number of things on it, thus destroying the
laws of simplicity, line and balance in decoration.
Avoid using on your walls as mere
decorations articles such as rugs or priests' vestments primarily intended
for other purposes.
Avoid the misuse of anything in
furnishing. It needs only knowledge and patience to find the correct thing
for each need. Better do without than employ a makeshift in decorating.
Inappropriateness and elaboration can
defeat artistic beauty but intelligent elimination never can beware of
having about too many vases, or china meant for domestic use. The proper
place for table china, no matter how rare it is, is in the dining room. If
very valuable, one can keep it in cabinets.
Useless bric-a-brac in a dining room looks
worse than it does anywhere else. Your dining room is the best place for
any brasses, copper or pewter you may own.
If sitting room and dining-room connect by
a wide opening, keep the same color scheme in both, or, in any case, the
same depth of color. This gives an effect of space. It is not uncommon
when a house is very small, to keep all of the walls and woodwork, and all
of the carpets, in exactly the same color and tone. If variety in the
color-scheme is desired, it may be introduced by means of cretonnes or
silks used for hangings and furniture covers.
Avoid the use of thin, old silks on sofas
or chair seats. Avoid too cheap materials for curtains or chair covers, as
they will surely fade.
Avoid too many small rugs in a room. This
gives an impression of restless disorder and interferes with the
architect's lines. Do not place your rugs at strange angles; but let them
follow the lines of the walls.
Avoid placing ornaments or photographs on
a piano, which is in sufficiently good condition to be used.
Avoid the chance of ludicrous effects. For
example, keep a plain background behind your piano. Make sure that, when
listening to music you are not distracted by seeing a bewildering section
of a picture above the pianist's head, or a silly little vase dodging, as
he moves, in front of, above, or below his nose!
Avoid placing vases, or a clock, against a
chimneypiece already elaborately decorated by the architect, as a part of
his scheme in using the moulding of panel to frame a painting over the
mantel. In the old palaces one sees that a bit of undecorated background
is provided between mantel and the architect's decoration. If your room
has a long wall space, furnish it with a large cabinet or console, or a
sofa and two chairs.
Avoid blotting out your architect's
cleverest points by thoughtlessly misplacing hangings. Whoever decorates
should always keep the architect's intention in mind.
Avoid having an antique clock, which does
not go, and is used merely as an ornament. Make your rooms alive by having
all the clocks running. This is one of the subtleties, which marks the
difference between an antique shop, or museum, and a home.
Avoid the desecration of the few good
antiques you own, by the use of a too modern color scheme. Have the
necessary modern pieces you have bought to supplement your treasures,
stained or painted a dull dark color in harmony with the antiques, and
then use dull colors in the floor coverings, curtains and cushions. If you
have no good old ornaments, try to get a few good shapes and colors in
inexpensive reproductions of the period to which your antiques belong.
Avoid the mistake of forgetting that every
room is a "stage setting," and must be a becoming and harmonious
background for its OCCUT pants.
Avoid arranging a Louis XVI bedroom, with
fragile antiques and delicate tones, for your husband of athletic
proportions and elemental tastes. He will not only feel, but also look out
of place. If he happens to be fond of artistic things, give him these in
durable shades and shapes.
Avoid the omission of a thoroughly
masculine sitting room, library, smoking-room or billiard-room for the
man, or men, of the house.
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