Home Sweet Home

Comfort is the keynote in bedroom planning, not only for the average eight hours of rest each day, but for the entire 24 hours. The bedroom should have an atmosphere that is conducive to reading, writing, sewing, and knitting, or just plain relaxing. It should have a feeling of privacy, yet should be the kind of a room where the door can be left open, and it will reflect the mood of the decor of the rest of the home.

Although furnishings should be chosen for comfort, convenience, and beauty, it is the background—colors, patterns, and textures in walls, floors, window treatments, bedspreads, and upholstery—that does the most to create a feeling of comfort and tranquillity.

When you plan bedroom decorating, consider first the ways this room will be used—the ages and interests of the occupants, whether it will be used daily or only occasionally, the size of the room, and the amount of money you have budgeted for this expenditure.

Each bedroom type will have different requirements. The master suite should have provision for a study or lounging area, as well as for sleeping. A guest room will not get as much use as a family bedroom does. It should have minimal storage—perhaps a couple of drawers kept only for the use of guests, the rest available for out-of-season family items— and provide luggage racks to save unprotected surfaces. A child’s room needs rugged, take-it materials easily cared for that can be replaced with adult colors and furnishings as he grows older, more demanding.

There are many ways to make a small bedroom look larger, and any of them can add personality and that extra touch of ingenuity to the room. Color and pattern, architectural motifs, texture, the wise selection of furniture, lighting, floor coverings and accessories, furniture arrangement—your floor plan, geared to floor space and balance of height— all of these should enter into your planning. You can visually change the shape of an ordinary square room so that it looks longer or wider, seems to take the eye forward, gives the effect of space.

How to fool the eye

There are three basic ways to fool the eye into an illusion of space. One is by the use of color. Pale colors recede, pull the eye outward. A soft shell of pure white, or a tint of your favorite color covering walls, floor, and ceiling, is one approach. To keep this from being dull, you need variation of the basic color and some notes of rich dark wood and the glint of brightness, perhaps in shining glass accessories, in gilt around a mirror frame, in brass lamp bases or light fixtures. Bright color can produce the same effect, if used in small quantities. A vivid panel behind the bed plays against light tones in all of the other parts of the room, but it should be balanced with accessories in the same brilliance on the opposite side of the room.

An interesting way of adding space is through the addition of architectural detail to an otherwise plain and unexciting room. Simple moldings, selected to go with the style of the furnishings, can be affixed to the walls and to the ceilings in arch effects, by their very shape drawing the eye out of the room. Paint the spaces between the arches a softer tint of one of the accessory colors, and you have advanced still further. Or select lighting that will play interesting shadows across the wall.

The selective use of pattern is the third way in which to enlarge visually a small bedroom. The secret is to choose a pattern with depth, not a flat floral. This can be a light pattern on a dark background, or a dark pattern on a light background—a scenic, a geometric, a grillelike motif—any design that truly draws the eye outward.

It can be used on one long wall to make the room seem wider than it is, for a focal point of decorating interest. It can be applied to walls and ceilings, used for window coverings, either draperies or laminated shades, for a bedspread. Team it with carpet or rugs in a solid tone drawn from the pattern.

Balancing pattern across a room is still another way to make space. If your basic print is used on one solid wall, add its motif to the other side of the room. Appliqué or embroider the design on sheer window curtains, pick up the colors in braid trim for an extra. Or stencil the design on plain ready-made shades.

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