Omaha daily bee., 1919-09-13
Color in The Home.

There is = craze for sunshine COL
ors in house furnishing and decora-
alton now. The drab years have
passed, and with them has gone the
taste for grays and fawns. Rooms
now glow with happier tints. A
firm in Omaha which guides or inter
! prets much of the most beautiful
and 4 good deal of the most extrav-
agant schemes of interior decora-
ton has been lighting up the walls
land windows, the carpets and the
chairs of town and country man
sions with blues, puppies, and
oranges, jade greens and flame"
the last perhaps the newest color
for faded rooms.
The Chinese atmosphere is every
where just now and brilliant colors
make 4 fine background for lacquer.
For a great country house whose
mistress is a lover of Chinese blue,
a beautiful room has been designed
in blues and orange. On the walls
will be hand-blocked Chinese
, pagoda- patterned cretonne in
Chinese blue, with a little Chinese
yellow in the pattern and the out
side mouldings yellow. The carpet
and the curtains will be of brilliant
orange, and the furniture is to be of
black lacquer. There is no color
so joyous or wonderful in its sug-
gestion of youth as orange, and the
sun coming into such room foods
it with red-gold glow. Such room
as this. however, is only for the rich.
! 1t is l5xlS, and for its walls. cur
.stains and carpet its owner will pay
high.
Rooms have to be studied like
people, for their adornment. Their
height, their width, and their rela
ton to the sun must be considered.
They also have to be treated in rela-
ton to those who live in them.
People are playing with colors now.
Some tints, like amber and yellow,
are very difficult. You have to lead
ZIP to them, and often before the
scheme is complete the designer
throws it up in dispair. Brown is
the most difficult of all. Of every
100 people who think they want
brown, and come to the great furn-
ishing houses with their color
palettes full of every tone, IS resign
themselves to another color. Greens
ARE the easiest colors to live with,
and joyous jade greens, some shot
with blue, others with yellow, are
How to be found in the most digni-
fed rooms. Greens rest tired eyes
in a way that captious, chilly blues
can never do. Those who cannot
change their furnishings often favor
This kindly color.
= Stripes and 'plain-colored hang
.ings give size and height to a room
Motley cretonnes or silks draw in
and make it smaller. So it is we'll
TO 90 warily when dealing with the
brilliant furnishings of today. They
are as proportionately costly as
clothing, and a mistake in handling
them is difficult to remedy. Carpets
are more than three times their for
smer price, and FURNISHING silks,
. (which must be silk right through
are three times their pre-war rates.
Cretonne is two and half times its
old price. But they are all far love
lier and not so staid apd formal in
some fabrics nor so worried in
others as those of 1914. The Ger
mans. it is comforting to know, can
not do anything like them: They
have their scouts now making a
round of the furnishing houses in
Europe trying to buy lengths to
take back (to Sweden they say, but
the buyers know better)' with Is
Der cent discount. They want to
copy them, but so far no one will
knowingly sell them an inch of
radiant silk or cretonne.