"The Art of Home Beautification"

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When we furnish our homes, we take the furniture and its accessories and the colors, and compose from them a whole in which the soul finds rest, both to the eye and to the feeling. But how can we judge the beauty of a given set of furniture? And how can we determine whether one piece is in proportion with another? A knowledge of the basic elements of beauty resolves these questions and makes us able to appraise at its true worth a table, a sofa, or a chair. When a room strikes you as natural and comfortable, you can be certain that it is well arranged, following the rules of scale, balance, and proportion. Proportion is a matter of contrasting sizes and shapes, and a matter of distribution. We want to secure in our homes a cheerful proportion; we want each piece by itself to be beautiful and attractive in size and shape; we want each piece to be in harmony with the others; and we want, too, to distribute the furnishings in the rooms and arrange them so that they form a pleasant, attractive group.

Fortunately, we are all blessed with an eye that distinguishes things and relates them to one another. Usually, however elementary our knowledge, we feel instinctively whether the furniture is in proportion, and our eye afterward confirms this feeling by the method of comparison with the neighboring sizes and shapes. A small lampshade on a massive base or column is like a tiny hat on the head of a stout lady. Proportion, then, is the bond among the members of a single body: it makes the relation of shapes to one another pleasing or unpleasing. When it is said that a certain table has beautiful lines, what is meant is that its legs are good in size and shape in relation to the top. By lines and scale is meant the proportion of the size of any shape whatsoever to all the other shapes taken together. In order to select and arrange things that look beautiful together, you must develop in yourself the sense of scale. For scale applies to all kinds of decoration, colors and materials alike. Certain colors have the property of changing the apparent size of a thing, and this is closely bound up with scale. If, for example, we paint a small desk in a bright color, it appears to the eye larger than it is in reality, because the strength of the color compensates, to a certain degree, for what is lost in strength and size in the design. The materials used have this same property: if you used a coarse fabric to upholster a seat, it would look larger than if you used a silken fabric. And scale must not merely be correct; it must also appear correct to the eye. When you arrange the furniture, the group must be harmonious with itself — bearing in mind that every piece of it must also be in proportion. If we hang a small picture above a large sofa, it comes out unanchored; but two pictures alike in their lines may make the case better and finer.

If every lady who studies the problem of decorating her house would pause a little and take into account the scale of the room and the parts that are to compose it, she would avoid many mistakes. The common mistakes in furnishing houses are the choosing or the use of furnishings too large in scale and shape for the room. Large sizes in a large room make it look small, and in a small room they make it crowded. Furniture must first of all be in proportion to the size of the room. Small rooms, for example, make it imperative to use small pieces, with small patterns and light, gay colors, so that their effect upon the eye is spaciousness in the room.

Your desire to beautify your house helps you to determine the sizes and scales suitable for the furnishings, and their design, employing the proportion that produces pleasing effects upon the mind. Pieces of large size suggest a feeling of solidity and sobriety, just as small, slender pieces suggest the idea of daintiness and elegance. Lines can disguise proportion: the eye travels across the one, with its horizontal divisions, and so makes it appear wider; while in the other the eye travels vertically, and the rectangle appears taller. The Greeks, after deep study, were able to arrive at the golden rectangle, founded on a proportion of the sides of three to two, which became a model of excellent proportion; but it is not necessary to apply this proportion literally. We may make it five to three, or eight to five, and these give good results — in beauty and attractiveness — and for the same reason we take care, in the division of rooms and walls and window openings, to apply these proportions or something near them.

This simple rule helps in designing a seat, arranging curtains, hanging a mirror or a picture, or dividing rooms and walls by the placing of the furnishings and the openings of the windows, and the rest. A sofa three meters long against a wall five meters long draws the eye at once by its complete harmony. For example, a buffet two meters long needs a space three meters long. Likewise the odd number is more satisfying than the even: a group made up of three pieces balancing three others is more restful to the eye than two with two or four with four, and likewise two with three is better than two with four — and this helps greatly in distributing the furnishings and in arranging pictures and paintings, for instance.

And so, Madam, your house must grow proportioned and harmonious throughout its rooms; and through this growth, with its rich beauty and the expressive personality of its character, it will go arrayed in that pleasing beauty for which everyone longs.

(Drawings by the artist Caris)