GLOOMY ROOMS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 143, 2 June 1911, Page 11

GLOOMY ROOMS.

THE SCIENTIFIC’ CHOICE OF WALL-PAPER. To make a proper choice of wallpapers it is necessary to know exactly how much light each colour throws back and how much it swallows up and destroys. Everyone has some more or less vague notions on the point. But dissatisfaction often arises when the paperhanger has finished, because the large surface gives entirely different effects from those anticipated when the choice was made. We choose our papers most often from small patterns, and these are seen in a light of quite different quantity and intensity fjom the light in the room to De decorated. In these days of sanitary enlightenment when everybody knows that light not only speedily kills the germs of disease, but stimulates the nerves and keeps the spirits cheerful, there is a little excuse for the choice of a dark paper. But if, for an extremely bright and sunny room, a dark paper is to be chosen, then the precise amount of darkening it will effect should be known. THE BRIGHTEST POSSIBLE PAPER. No paper reflects all the light which falls on it, but the brightest of all papers would be white blot-

ting paper, if that »vere allowed on the walls. White blotting paper reflects four-fifths of the light. The remaining fifth it absorbs and renders useless. Ordinary foolscap is less bright, swallowing three-tenths and reflecting only seven-tenths. Taking these as the biggest possible papers we can see how a room may be treated so as to be cheerfully luminous or as glooms as a prison. The range is so great that we can make the walls of one room darker than another, although the same amount of light enters both. The brightest wallpaper is the white figured, while white and gold is almost as effective in throwing back the light falling on it. It may be taken as reflecting nearly seven-tenths. Next comes chrome yellow, and this is followed closely by orange paper, reflecting five-tenths of the light. DARK EFFECT OF LIGHT BLUE. Yellow wallpaper and a yellow painted wall will give back only four-tenths of the light; they swallow up more than they reflect; and light pink paper is just a trifle less bright. Light blue paper is rather deceitful. Contrary to what one would expect, it absorbs threefourths of the light thrown upon it, and gives back to the room only one-fourth (SJ-tenths.)

Light brown and emerald 'green paper and a yellow painted wall when it is dirty reflect only twotenths of the light. Dark brown, ver million, bluegreen, and cobalt blue absorb nearly nine-tenths, and reflect only a trifle more than one-tenth of the light. Worst of all is deep choc i ate paper unless we think of i sing black cloth or black velvet. Chocr late paper reflects only one-twenty-fifth of the light, black cloth only one-eighty-fourth, and black velvet I 250th.