IN these servantless days, the bungalow type of house grows more and more popular. It is compact, convenient; it only asks for a simple type of furniture. A mixture of good willow, painted or left in its natural color, in the body, and with the braided edge painted or stained; some old mahogany or walnut pieces, if you are fortunate enough to own them, mix in well, or good simple reproductions. By walnut furniture I do not mean the hideous black walnut “Eastlake” types. These, with their scrolls and marble tops and glooms, are, I hope, forever relegated to oblivion.
I shudder now in remembrance of a set of black walnut furniture in my grandmother’s bedroom, particularly an enormous bureau, with its marble top, huge great mirror supported by carved columns that wiggled upward, and topped over all by massive carved grapes. How I gazed in awe while a terrible stillness always filled me as I planted my small person in front of it!
And oh! the terrible “best rooms” of the past! I remember a friend telling me that in her father’s house the “best room” door was never left open. That closed door, at the foot of the stairs—how it filled her with absolute horror! And she had a trick of throwing herself around the newel post with a tremendous swing—with enough “way” to land her up two or three steps of the stairs if she was going up, or ’way round, well past that awful door, if she was coming down stairs. Imagine the effect on that little mind. And the shrinking terror with which she grew up. The awful something behind those doors! What was it? What an opportunity for an inhibition! The “best room,” thank Fate, has forever left us, and in its place we are putting the living room where the family draws magnetically together. Wonderful if it has an open fire, and most bungalows now have. The open fire is the soul of a room. We gravitate toward it instinctively. We group our furniture round it. We draw up chairs, stools, anything to get within its cheerful glow.
Arrange your furniture with some meaning, in groups if it is a large room. There is the group around the fire; the group around the tea table; the group around the reading table, with its glow of light, centred to draw the family together in peace and concord.
Above all things avoid “small junk.” The sins that are committed in the name of “bric-à-brac” can never be atoned for. There is no Hades big enough! And the amount of money that is spent is appalling. If you can’t have a few fine bits, preferably antique, there are many modern Chinese porcelains that are lively and full of color. Don’t be afraid of empty spaces—books, flowers, a work box, all have meaning and purpose. There never was a drawing room too fine for a lady’s work box; and what a sense of cozy human sympathy it always has—the chair beside a low table with a work box, a vase of flowers, a book. That brings us to another point. Have low tables—as many as your room will hold—without crowding, of course, and instead of cheap, utterly meaningless junk—cheap though it may have cost much actual money—have flowers, or green branches of laurel leaves or a small growing plant; and a book or magazine on a low table placed beside the chair where your family or guest may take comfort and pleasure.
To go back to our starting point—the bungalow. Arrange any rooms on the first floor so that they do not clash, not necessarily using the same tones but as far as possible letting the colors in one room lead into another or carry on a suggestion from one to another. In other words, keep your vista so that the effect, while not being monotonous, avoids the chopped-up restless result we have when we break up our space by too many colors. Have your house restful and keep away from the temptation to put too many things about. Rather do as the Japanese—keep a lot in the closet and change them around. Have a large table with a large lamp whose shade permits a wide radius of light, so that several persons may sit within its circle. Put books and magazines and papers on the table or in little racks, for your bungalow living room is an informal room. Parchment lamp-shades are lovely in a bungalow and can be made plain with bands of color or with a design, depending on the material used for cushions, etc. Have one or two large divans with loose cushions, depending on the size of your living room. Over-stuffed pieces look much smarter and most intimate if upholstered in chintzes. If your chintz is delicate in color and design, have fitted slip covers well made with corded seams and pleated valances. Very tailored these must be—not at all the loose baggy things we put on as dust-covers in summer. The finest drawing rooms in England have these fitted slip covers, and the delicate chintzes can thus be easily cleansed.
In the niches or corners between your rooms put large Spanish or Moorish jars, which come in a very inexpensive pottery vivid in color; and one can always get a bough of green to put in them.
Of course there are many types of bungalows, from the very simple ones with pine sheathed varnished walls to the permanent type with plastered and tinted walls, which permit of a more elaborate and permanent kind of furnishings.
For the primitive bungalow, grass rugs or those made of fiber, of which there are many charming and very smart ones to choose from, are very effective, if your furnishings are very simple and you haven’t much color about. But in the permanent type of house almost any kind of carpet rug, Oriental or Chinese rug can be used.
Have only lamps in your living room, lots of them; no side lights, though these in simple appropriate design are most attractive and necessary in the dining room, as you have no overhead light and no other light except your table candles. Painted furniture is most charming in a bungalow dining room, or you can use painted chairs and a mahogany table. The color in your rooms should be determined by the exposure of your house.
Personally I like paper in country bedrooms. There are so many very pretty papers that are reproductions of fine old chintz designs, that give a deliciously crisp fresh look, and it is so easy to take one of the colors in the paper as your color scheme for the room. Paint up a lot of old furniture if you have it; body color it some tone in your paper and put lines of another color; or if you can paint, take some motive in your paper or chintz and reproduce it on your furniture. Don’t be in a hurry to do it all at once. It will grow—one thing will suggest another and it becomes a perfectly fascinating sort of game.
If your wall has a flowered paper, it is well to use some plain material for curtains—or something with very inconspicuous pattern. If your windows are very small and your house is where no one can see in, have your sash window curtains pushed well back to give you all the beauty of your view. Let in all the sunshine and air you possibly can.
For country bedrooms nothing is prettier than dotted swiss—or organdie or ordinary book muslin, made with little ruffles on the inside. They dress up a room at once; and remember this—that if your windows are properly handled, your curtains well chosen and well made, your room is half—more than half—done, for immediately on entering a room our gaze goes toward the window. Really enchanting curtains can be made of ginghams and voiles and many materials that one sees in the day’s shopping. For bedrooms a valance of chintz over the muslin window curtain will give up color—if we don’t want chintz curtains at the sides of our window.
Be very careful that you get the right shade of your color. There are blues that are warm and blues that are very cold. Pink can be one of the hardest tones I know, if it is in a room with the wrong exposure. Some yellows are sunny, others very dull. You have to try them in your rooms—each with its own angle of exposure and light and reflection.
In your verandah furnishings you have room for no end of color. You can let yourself go to your heart’s content—not freakish color but good strong ringing tones. The out of doors absorbs them in such a way that they are never garish or hard. Avoid heavy stuffy coverings and portieres, avoid “schemes” of decoration. Plan for comfort, for a suitable background that expresses the life of the family living within the walls of your house. Keep your floors low in tone—a well finished floor has much to do as a background with all the furniture we place upon it. See that it is well stained and polished and your wall tones soft and neutral. Be sincere—don’t do things for effect, but let your home express your life and in return it will give you joy and comfort.