Principles of Home Decoration
CHAPTER XI
FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS
Although in ordinary sequence the coloring of floors comes after that of
walls, the fact that—in important houses—costly and elaborate floors of mosaic
or of inlaid wood form part of the architect's plan, makes it necessary to
consider the effect of inherent or natural colors of such floors, in connection
with applied color-schemes in rooms.
Mosaic floors, being as a rule confined to halls in private houses, need
hardly be considered in this relation, and costly wood floors are almost
necessarily confined to the yellows of the natural woods. These yellows range
from pale buff to olive, and are not as a rule inharmonious with any other tint,
although they often lack sufficient strength or intensity to hold their own with
stronger tints of walls and furniture.
As it is one of the principles of color in a house that the floor is the
foundation of the room, this weakness of color in hard-wood floors must be
acknowledged as a disadvantage. The floors should certainly be able to support
the room in color as well as in construction. It must be the strongest tint in
the room, and yet it must have the unobtrusiveness of strength. This makes floor
treatment a more difficult problem, or one requiring more thought than is
generally supposed, and explains why light rooms are more successful with
hard-wood floors than medium or very dark ones.
There are many reasons, sanitary as well as economic, why hard-wood floors
should not be covered in ordinary dwelling-houses; and when the pores of the
wood are properly filled, and the surface kept well polished, it is not only
good as a fact, but as an effect, as it reflects surrounding tints, and does
much to make up for lack of sympathetic or related colour. Yet it will be found
that in almost every case of successful color-treatment in a room, something
must be added in the way of floor-covering to give it the sense of completeness
and satisfaction which is the result of a successful scheme of decoration.
The simplest way of doing this is to cover enough of the space with rugs to
attract the eye, and restore the balance lost by want of strength of color in
the wood. Sometimes one or two small rugs will do this, and these may be of
almost any tint which includes the general one of the room, even if the general
tint is not prominent in the rug. If the use or luxury of the room requires more
covered space, it is better to use one rug of a larger size than several small
and perhaps conflicting ones. Of course in this the general tone of the rug must
be chosen for its affinity to the tone of the room, but that affinity secured,
any variations of color occurring in the design are apt to add to the general
effect.
SQUARE
HALL IN CITY HOUSE
A certain amount of contrast to prevailing colour is an advantage, and the
general value of rugs in a scheme of decoration is that they furnish this
contrast in small masses or divisions, so well worked in with other tints and
tones that it makes its effect without opposition to the general plan.
Thus, in a room where the walls are of a pale shade of copper, the rugs
should bring in a variety of reds which would be natural parts of the same
scale, like lower notes in the octave; and yet should add patches of relative
blues and harmonising greens; possibly also, deep gold, and black and white;—the
latter in minute forms and lines which only accent or enrich the general effect.
It is really an interesting problem, why the strong colours generally used in
Oriental rugs should harmonise so much better with weaker tints in walls and
furniture than even the most judiciously selected carpets can possibly do. It is
true there are bad Oriental rugs, very bad ones, just as there may be a villain
in any congregation of the righteous, but certainly the long centuries of
Eastern manufacture, reaching back to the infancy of the world, have given
Eastern nations secrets not to be easily mastered by the people of later days.
But if we cannot tell with certainty why good rugs fit all places and
circumstances, while any other thing of mortal manufacture must have its place
carefully prepared for it, we may perhaps assume to know why the most beautiful
of modern carpets are not as easily managed and as successful.
In the first place having explained that some contrast, some fillip of
opposing color, something which the artist calls snap, is absolutely
required in every successful color scheme, we shall see that if we are to get
this by simple means of a carpet, we must choose one which carries more than one
color in its composition, and color introduced as design must come under the
laws of mechanical manufacture; that is, it must come in as repeating
design, and here comes in the real difficulty. The same forms and the same
colors must come in in the same way in every yard, or every half or
three-quarter yard of the carpet. It follows, then, that it must be evenly
sprinkled or it must regularly meander over every yard or half yard of the
surface; and this regularity resolves itself into spots, and spots are
unendurable in a scheme of color. So broad a space as the floor of a room cannot
be covered by sections of constantly repeated design without producing a spotty
effect, although it can be somewhat modified by the efforts of the good
designer. Nevertheless, in spite of his best knowledge and intention, the
difficulty remains. There is no one patch of color larger than another, or more
irregular in form. There is nothing which has not its exact counterpart at an
exact distance—north, south, east and west, or northeast, southeast, northwest
and southwest—and this is why a carpet with good design and excellent color
becomes unbearable in a room of large size. In a small room where there are not
so many repeats, the effect is not as bad, but in a large room the monotonous
repetition is almost without remedy.
Of course there are certain laws of optics and ingenuities of composition
which may palliate this effect, but the fact remains that the floor should be
covered in a way which will leave the mind tranquil and the eye satisfied, and
this is hard to accomplish with what is commonly known as a figured carpet.
If carpet is to be used, it seems, then, that the simplest way is to select a
good monochrome in the prevailing tint of the room, but several shades darker.
Not an absolutely plain surface, but one broken with some unobtrusive design or
pattern in still darker darks and lighter lights than the general tone. In this
case we shall have the room harmonious, it is true, but lacking the element
which provokes admiration—the enlivening effect of contrast. This may be secured
by making the centre or main part of the carpet comparatively small, and using a
very wide and important border of contrasting colour—a border so wide as to make
itself an important part of the carpet. In large rooms this plan does not
entirely obviate the difficulty, as it leaves the central space still too large
and impressive to remain unbroken; but the remedy may be found in the use of
hearth-rugs or skin-rugs, so placed as to seem necessities of use.
As I have said before, contrast on a broad scale can be secured by choosing
carpets of an entirely different tone from the wall, and this is sometimes
expedient. For instance, as contrast to a copper-coloured wall, a softly toned
green carpet is nearly always successful. This one colour, green, is always safe
and satisfactory in a floor-covering, provided the walls are not too strong in
tone, and provided that the green in the carpet is not too green. Certain
brownish greens possess the quality of being in harmony with every other colour.
They are the most peaceable shades in the colour-world—the only ones without
positive antipathies. Green in all the paler tones can claim the title of
peace-maker among colours, since all the other tints will fight with something
else, but never with green of a corresponding or even of a much greater
strength. Of course this valuable quality, combined with a natural restfulness
of effect, makes it the safest of ordinary floor-coverings.
In bedrooms with polished floors and light walls good colour-effects can be
secured without carpets, but if the floors are of pine and need covering, no
better general effect can be secured than that of plain or mixed ingrain
filling, using with it Oriental hearth and bedside rugs.
The entire second floor of a house can in that case be covered with carpet in
the accommodating tint of green mentioned, leaving the various colour-connections
to be made with differently tinted rugs. Good pine floors well fitted and
finished can be stained to harmonise with almost any tint used in furniture or
upon the wall.
I remember a sea-side chamber in a house where the mistress had great natural
decorative ability, and so much cultivation as to prevent its running away with
her, where the floor was stained a transparent olive, like depths of sea-water,
and here and there a floating sea-weed, or a form of sea-life faintly outlined
within the colour. In this room, which seemed wide open to the sea and air, even
when the windows were closed, the walls were of a faint greenish blue, like what
is called dead turquoise, and the relation between floor and walls was so
perfect that it remained with me to this day as a crowning instance of
satisfaction in colour.
It is perhaps more difficult to convey an idea of happy choice or selection
of floor-color than of walls, because it is relative to walls. It must relate to
what has already been done. But in recapitulation it is safe to say, first, that
in choosing color for a room, soft and medium tints are better than positively
dark or bright ones, and that walls should be unobtrusive in design as well as
color; secondly, that floors, if of the same tint as walls, should be much
darker; and that they should be made apparent by means of this strength
of color, or by the addition of rugs or borders, although the relation between
walls and floor must be carefully preserved and perfectly unmistakable, for it
is the perfection of this relation of one color to another which makes home
decoration an art.
There is still a word to be said as to floor-coverings, which relates to
healthful housekeeping instead of art, and that is, that in all cases where
carpets or mattings are used, they should be in rug form, not fitted in to
irregular floor-spaces; so as to be frequently and easily lifted and cleaned.
The great, and indeed the only, objection to the use of mattings in country or
summer houses, is the difficulty of frequent lifting, and removal of accumulated
dust, which has sifted through to the floor—but if fine hemp-warp mattings are
used, and sewn into squares which cover the floor sufficiently, it is an ideal
summer floor-covering, as it can be rolled and removed even more easily than a
carpet, and there is a dust-shedding quality in it which commends itself to the
housekeeper.
