If you like FORMAL room
If you taste runs to 18th century mahogany furniture, rather than simpler early American maple, you probably like a somewhat formal room. Happily, we today are talking all sorts of liberties with period furniture, combining English and French pieces, and using today’s colors and fabrics with them. This we can do, provided we keep the scale and, broadly speaking, choose pieces of the same period, as for instance, the 18th century, but from different countries. And so, too, we have a way of combining a formal and informal atmosphere in a room to give us that “live able” quality and yet keep it on the formal side. This avoids stuffiness but gives restraint and a sense of order.
Perhaps you may say, “of course, fine furniture makes fine rooms.” Not always. The furniture might be fine but the room a hodgepodge. A number of other factors affect the complete result, such as background, restraint, balance, arrangement, etc. but rather than theorize let us consider the picture opposite.
Indeed I know of no better example of a simple, formal room than this living room of a friend of mine who altered on old farmhouse and threw two rooms into one to make the attractive room I’m showing here and on the next page. It has real quality, produced partly by its nice proportions, its fine though, simple colonial mantel, paneled dado around the base of the walls, and simple picture molding at the ceiling line. These three architectural items mantel, dado, molding, brought from a genuine colonial room, are not expensive to build in if you want the proper background for a simple 18th century room.
The corner cupboard matches the woodwork and so falls into the architectural scheme, as do the colonial paneled doors and the deep recessed windows. The background sets the style of formality or informality of a room, as well as the type of furniture chosen. Many people fear the expense and overlook the importance of a proper background. This is a mistake. Spend more on it and less on the furnishings.
Any color you like may be chosen for the walls of a formal room; white, straw color, soft blue, green. Walls may be paneled wood, stained or painted, or they may be papered. In this instance, the wood – work is white; the walls yellow; the curtains striped yellow and blue; the floor stained and waxed a dark walnut tone and nearly covered with a rug of deeper brown. The upholstery is blue and yellow with accents of pink and green in the chintz.
Orderly arrangement is a characteristic of formal rooms, whether 18th century English or French, modern, or what have you. In large rooms there may be two or three groups, as here. The fireside group has a delightful combination of Lawson sofa and Louis XVI chair; an Adam satinwood secretary desk is in the background and a colonial mahogany table in the fireplace, desk near the windows, table with lamp to give light at night near place where windows give it in the daytime.
Draperies are hung formally to the floor with cords to close at night. They may either hang straight or be draped back – whichever you prefer. Use shaped or straight valances of the same fabric, or painted or gilded cornices with plain glass curtains, floor length, or Venetian blinds to the window sill, matching the color of the woodwork. Tapes vary but usually match the blinds in a formal room. Accessories, like the furniture, may be gathered from hither and yon, but must be formal in character.
