48 
House & Garden 
COLOR TRANSITION BETWEEN ROOMS 
How the Hallway Sets the Color Note for the Rooms That Adjoin It- 
Selecting and Blending the Colors 
ALICE F. AND BETTINA JACKSON 
C OLOR transition is one of the most fre¬ 
quent and important problems with which 
we have to deal when choosing the colors for our 
rooms. This problem may be solved through 
various mediums, such as wall covering, floor 
finish, woodwork, rugs, curtains and portieres. 
Each of these must be considered not separately 
but in its relation to the others, so that all will 
work together to produce an interior in which 
the gradation of tone or change of color from 
room to room is restful and harmonious. 
Abrupt changes in color schemes, especially in 
wall color—as from brown to gray—are dis¬ 
quieting and completely destroy the effect of 
unity which should exist between rooms. 
The Double Door Problem 
In almost every home there are rooms which 
open through double doorways into the hall¬ 
way, or into other rooms, sometimes both, and 
such an arrangement requires much care in 
the choice of wall decoration, woodwork and 
furnishings, that there may be a pleasing 
transition of color from one to the other. 
The hall should be the keynote of the home, 
as the first impression of the home is received 
here; and every effort should be made to give 
it an air of dignified hospitality, an air which 
welcomes the incomer and immediately puts 
him at ease. This atmosphere is accomplished 
through the decorative scheme, which must also 
play the double role of being pleas¬ 
ing in itself and presenting an har¬ 
monious color transition to the rooms 
into which the hall opens. Though 
a hall or room may be thoroughly 
satisfying when considered by it¬ 
self, nothing makes it seem so de¬ 
tached from the rest of the house as 
a color scheme which has nothing in 
common with the schemes of adjoin¬ 
ing rooms. 
The Hallway Sets the Color 
The size and lighting of the hall 
and rooms help determine whether 
the wall covering shall be formal or 
informal, plain or figured, light or 
medium in tone. As the hall is gen¬ 
erally the meeting point of different 
color schemes, we must either keep it neutral 
in background, or use a figured paper in 
which the colors are skillfully combined. If 
your problem is that of an apartment or cot¬ 
tage, where the hall is small and therefore in¬ 
formal, a satisfactory solution is flat paint or 
plain paper throughout, the same color or sev¬ 
eral tints of that color, light in tone, and rather 
neutral. The woodwork, whether natural fin¬ 
ish or painted, should be uniform, the same 
rule applying, so far as possible, to the floors. 
This treatment gives unity and apparently in¬ 
creases the size; and monotony is avoided 
through the use of different but congenial hues 
in the furnishings of the several rooms. 
Starting with this uniform background you 
can further the transition by means of rugs, 
hangings, and upholstery. A rug carefully 
chosen as to color and placed in a doorway 
gracefully brings together adjoining color 
schemes. If rooms are connected by large open 
doorways the portieres may repeat the color of 
the walls, slightly deeper in tone, or be of 
double-faced material showing the two colors 
used in the respective rooms. Only colors 
which harmonize should be chosen for such an 
arrangement, as each room should show at least 
a note of the color used in the other. A tap¬ 
estry combining these colors could be used in 
both rooms, with the accessor}- color of each 
{Continued on page 62) 
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a central hall which gives the basic 
color for the rooms leading off it, 
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In a medium size house a gray, blue and green hall gives the key to the 
gray and green library, the gray and terra cotta dining room and the 
living room in gray and blue 
From the verdure tapestry paper in the hallway of this 
large house are selected distinctive colors for the reception 
room, dining room and living room 
