Delight In Furnishing

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31168, 19 September 1966, Page 2

Delight In Furnishing

<B« JOCELYN FISH) Depending on how you look at it, moving into a new flat from an old and possibly spacious family home can, from the furnishing aspect, be either devastating or a sheer delight.

If you have furniture treasured for sentimental reasons you may find to your disappointment that it is either too big for the smaller rooms or out of keeping. But this is not necessarily so, for antique and modem styles can be blended skilfully with most pleasing results. But if you are lucky enough to be able to start from scratch—if you do not have to make do with curtains that are too good to discard, or chair-covers that may have been someone else’s choice anyway, then here is your chance to express your own personality—to let yourself go in creating beauty and the kind of home-setting you have always wanted for yourself. Where to start? Today it does not really matter much because there Is such a tremendous range of colour in every type of furnishing fabric, wallpaper, or paint and one need no longer feel restricted to working from the floor level up. Choose colours that appeal to your own personality and do not be influenced by wellmeaning friends who may tell you that certain colours will be too cold for a room facing south or others too hot for a northern room.

According to one wellknown colour consultant there are really no rules about this. She believes that colour is the biggest expression of personality. A colour that may seem cool and restful to one person may, to another, be stimulating and exciting.

If you have some treasured possession like a picture or a niece of porcelain, or fabric that really appeals to you because of the beauty of its colours, then begin at that point, she advises, matching and blending colours to tone with what could, if you wish, become the focal point of your whole colour scheme. If you have a bachelor flat or a flat with a small bedroom and living room, open it up with related colour to get a feeling of spaciousness. If you have a neutral back-

ground you can bring in strong colour as an accent. Extra Seating

It is most important that furniture should be interchangeable. In a small flat it could happen, for example, that bedroom chairs might be needed for extra seating in the living room. The more dominant colours and busy patterns make a room look smaller, so for a feeling of spaciousness it is better to avoid them. Do not be afraid of plain materials and unpatterned carpets. If your room is narrow in one part and you want to give it a look of breadth, horizontal shelves filled with books will help. In a flat with many windows, curtains can be most surprisingly expensive and it can be quite an economy to use attractive linings which, to the uninitiated, can easily pass for true and rich-looking curtain material. The linings, can be then used for their proper function at a later date. Mould grows readily in the dressing of some of the cheaper types of curtain lining so it is wise to wash the material several times to remove it.

Money can be saved by dispensing with pelmets and by using curtains with gathering tape, pronged hooks and, a three-inch stiffened top hem that will hide all trace of rails when the curtains are drawn.

If you are lucky enough to have a harbour view, frame it with plain curtains. Patterned curtains tend to detract from the view, taking the eye to the sides of the window. It is estimated that there is a heat-loss of up to 35 per cent through uncovered glass in a room, so it is an economy to have curtains that will draw right across when needed. Double Tracks

Another way of conserving room-heat is to have double curtain tracks, one for linings and one for curtains. This keeps the coldest air close to warm air between the two lots of curtaining, giving double insulation. If fine nylon is used for the curtains nearest the win-

dow these can do a double duty, being used in place of Venetian blinds to break down fierce sunlight. Nylon also makes excellent shower curtains.

For the very sunny corner where it seems that curtain fading will be inevitable, Indian cotton fabrics are invaluable. This absolutely colour-fast material can be bought in New Zealnd for as little as 3s a yard but it is immensely popular and is snapped up immediately it appears in the shops. There was an instance of this material being used to cover chairs and a settee in a blazingly sunny Remuera sun porch. At the end of 18 years’ service the covers were adapted using some of the original cut-offs. The colour had not faded in the slightest degree. Two innovations on the New Zealand curtain market are an attractive self-lined insulated curtain fabric retailing about 19s 6d a yard, and a new packaged deal of readymade curtains (sft to 6ft 6in long) which have proved most popular overseas. These can be bought for as little as 42s 6d a pair and are designed to fit most standard types of windows. They also vary in type from the nylon cross-over variety to straight, frilled curtains—plan, contemporary or floral.