Choosing Wallpapers

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 403, 11 July 1928, Page 7

Choosing Wallpapers

(By

“PENATES”)

ARCHITECTURAL SCHEME

Points for Women

CHOOSING wallpaper is an unsettling business. By the time some scores of samples have been passed in review bewilderment usually overtakes the chooser; the best laid plans are apt to go agley. It is wise then to go home, and take the bearings all over again before the final decision is made. True, the showman won’t like it, but that cannot be helped. Every woman knows her dislikes; most women think they know their likings, and if that were all, choice would be easy. But there are so many other considerations —aspect of the room; carpet, curtains, and covers; the nature of the room and the character of its occupants. Not until all have been squared with personal inclinations has the really good choice been made.

To these familiar points for paper-hunters another, less familiar, must be added. That is to choose the wailpaper in relation

to the architecture of the room—to make sure that the good features are accentuated, and the bad ones disguised, to turn the proportions of frieze, filling and dado to the best account, or if need be, to scrap them altogether. Speaking generally, the wall space of a low room should not be cut up by these divisions. A skirting, a narrow cornice at the ceiling, is usually all that is needed. Nine times out of a dozen plain wall coverings looks better than a patterned one in rooms of this type. The low pitched room is charming, but the charm is not enhanced by over-stressing, and a pattern that is too definite in design has that effect. Vertical stripes always add to the apparent height of a room, so a room that is considered really too low in proportion to its size can be improved by striped wallpaper. Blue, which is a receding colour, is better than red, which is of the advancing kind. The ceiling coloured to match the walls, or to repeat it, in a paler version of the same colour, is a safer choice than the abrupt contrast offered by, say, a white ceiling and green-hung walls. Nevertheless bright colour and pattern overhead is no had way of giving character to a featureless, dull room. Skill is needed, of course, otherwise people will instinctively look upwards and the effect of a ceiling should be sub-conscious —reflective, as it were, rather than direct. Cream-yellow walls with a skiey treatment in bluegreys on a ceiling based in the same cream-yellow is a simple scheme which would not he in the least overwhelming in an ordinary room and yet might have more quality than a flat

I one. Walls hung with one of those suede-like tempera papers, in a pale cafe-au-lait tint, with a ceiling of the 1 same colour, veined in dull gold and

finished with egg-shell gloss, is another suggestion that works out beautifully in any soft tone. These traceries, veinings and cloudings of gold for the ceiling can be found among the newer marbled papers. An extra deep frieze is a good and a well-tried way of improving matters in a high-walled room, and if frieze and ceiling match the eye is still further tickled. The black frieze and ceiling which enjoyed so great a vogue some time ago has not the lowering quality that might be expected. On the contrary, black has atmosphere, and mystery; the black ceiling seems to recede and the impression produced is actually one of additional height. Red or orange overhead brings the height down much better. A red lacquer paper sprinkled thinly with gold stars is quite good on the ceiling of one of these too lofty rooms, with a plain matched red for the deep frieze., The filling might be of almost any neutral tint, or vague pattern which just echoed the overhead hue. Among the new rough papers is one modelled exactly on a fabric woven from thick cord; this in string colour would be nice for a morning room, with the skirting painted to match the ceiling. Sometimes it happens that one of these big rooms has been “recently decorated at great expense,” and the decorator has put up a naturalistic flower border which, to many a one, is anathema. Without going to the expense of another complete redecoration it is possible to substitute a different type of frieze and so make things quite tolerable at a small cost. As vertical stripes appear to heighten a wall, so horizontal stripes have the opposite effect.