Walls and Their Coatings 
By CLAUDIA O. MURPHY 
W E have long been prone to associate sanitary 
conditions for our walls with distinctly 
cold and unattractive effects. Happily, 
however, a better and truer realization of what sanita¬ 
tion stands for, has come about. It is no longer 
necessary to endanger health to obtain decorative 
treatment for our walls, for commercial science 
produces materials from which beautiful effects can 
be secured with full sanitary protection, for treated 
with such material, a wall may be beautiful, har¬ 
monious and artistic, and better than all, thoroughly 
sanitary. 
Sanitary as applied to walls defined in plain Eng¬ 
lish, means merely a surface that is clean and clean- 
able. It must also he a wall through which ventila¬ 
tion is possible and finally, it should be a color that 
is suitable. These four things constitute the sanitary 
wall. 
Taking up this matter of cleanliness, it is not 
logical to suppose that a clean wall can he secured 
by the use of unclean materials. The material from 
which the wash or medium of color for the finish of 
walls is made, must itself be absolutely clean. If it 
is made from a rock basis, finely ground and of 
natural cement, then it is clean provided the coloring 
material is also clean. A wall is cleanable when it is 
possible to rub it down with a dry brush, cleaning it 
thoroughly and removing all spider nests, cobwebs 
and dust without removing the color. Then, too, 
the cleanable and therefore desirable wall, must be of 
a material that does not require additional labor to 
prepare it for recoating. It is always ready for a 
fresh coat at any time, and in any place. 
In the past too little attention has been given the 
subject of ventilation; latterly, however, there is an 
improvement and great consideration has been given 
the matter of the wall surface as a means of filtering 
air from one apartment to another. A partition is 
not an air-tight impervious wall, it never should be. 
The ordinary plaster has perhaps forty per cent of 
void, open spaces in it, through which the air circu¬ 
lates freely, passing through the apertures from one 
room to another. When doors and windows are 
closed, the oxygen of a room would soon be exhausted 
and the air dead and inert were the room air tight, 
so this circulation of air from one room to another is 
not only necessary, but it is essential to the comfort 
and health of the occupant of the room. 
A wall coating should be used that does not close 
up these little cell-like openings in the plaster. That 
they are easily closed, is a fact which is unfortunately 
too true. In many modes of wall treatment, the use 
of correct tinting material, or in other words the 
application of a sanitary wall finish, makes better 
ventilation possible in adjoining apartments by 
continuing the air cells. 
The matter of color in regard to sanitation is 
always apropos. That colors affect the health and 
have remedial action upon the human system are 
generally accepted truths. 
A recent magazine article states that the continued 
living in rooms covered with bright reds produces 
discordant effects upon the nerves and induces all 
forms of nervous diseases. 
No class of people pay more attention to the matter 
of color on the walls than hospital superintendents, 
and the best hospitals to-day insist upon the buff- 
colored wall, as being most agreeable to the eye, re¬ 
flecting the largest percentage of light and producing 
the most soothing effect upon the occupants. 
The soft greens, light tans, dainty blues, exercise 
similar and desirable effects, but in less pronounced 
degree. The tinted wall furnishes a good setting 
and background for pictures and decorative bric-a- 
brac and accords well with figured curtains and floor 
coverings. The heavy, deadly colors are now largely 
relegated to the times that included the inartistic, 
old-fashioned, heavy lambrequins and portieres. 
The result is better housekeeping, more attractive 
homes and happier occupants. 
Another feature that it is desirable to include in any 
serious study of that which makes for sanitary walls, 
is the matter of the glazed, shiny surface seen when 
gloss paint is used or faience employed in the decora¬ 
tive scheme of walls in living-rooms. 
Mr. Thomas Collcutt, President of the Royal 
Institute of British* Architects, says in a recent 
address: “My own experience in a certain room 
lined with faience has been that of discomfort .and 
irritation. Being, as you will allow, something of 
an expert when domestic architecture is concerned, 
I was able to trace the cause of my discomfort to the 
glaze of the faience.” 
The dull mat effects are softer and supply a 
much more desirable background for furnishings. 
There are few houses built to-day in which the 
wisdom of tinting the walls of the interior for the 
first year at least, is not obvious. It frequently 
occurs that when this is done as a temporary make¬ 
shift that the occupants of the house are so satisfied 
with the soft flat tones that this treatment insures, 
that they retain them in preference to applying any 
other decoration. There are rich colors procurable 
in sanitary wall finish as well as delicate tones and by 
the judicious harmonizing of the various shades and 
colors, most pleasing effects result. 
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