3 ? 
House & Garden 
HOW TO MAKE LIVABLE ROOMS OF GREEN 
By Choosing the Right Shades and Combining With Them Harmonious Colors 
Something of Nature’s Softness is Produced 
ETHEL DAVIS SEAL 
T HERE is something about 
nearly every green room that 
is hard and depressing, and 
something, too, that we decorators 
might call “Thin”. There is no 
subtlety of atmosphere between you 
and the green chairs and sofas; the 
green walls are unchanged in their 
bleak harshness of tone as the day 
waxes and wanes; the green rug is 
as unimaginative as a frozen field, 
camouflaged with the lushness of 
June; and the best that can be said 
for the average green room is that it 
duplicates the fixed and fading green 
smile of late midsummer, with, how¬ 
ever, none of the allure of spring. 
What you should strive after in 
your green room is this same charm, 
this lightness, airiness and grace of 
spring. In this most delightful sea- 
Oyster white walls, a mauve floor, 
a green, black and lavender 
hooked rug; lavender jurniture 
trimmed with black and jade; 
bedspread of jade green taffeta 
quilted in mauve; cretonne drapes 
of green, mauve and rose. Thus 
the bedroom has been done 
son there is no harshness of color, 
no cumbersome masses, no soggy 
luxuriance: the miracle of an em¬ 
erald field is thrown into strange re¬ 
lief by the surrounding drabness of 
tone; the pale green leaves hover 
over the trees like a perfume; the 
dead vines of winter clinging to the 
sides of the houses quiver with life 
and a faint aura of green creeps in 
the wake of the sun; green shutters 
loom into prominence as decorative 
notes that blend with the vines, the 
fields and the trees; shy flowers 
spring out of the turf, blossoms 
hide in the woods close to the gray 
trunks of trees, pushing blue and 
pink faces through the dead brown 
leaves of winter. And over all, the 
sky, blue, gold, rose, or gray, be- 
(Continued on page 72) 
In this living room a dark leaf 
green has been used on the floor 
with an oval braided rug in gray, 
green and black. The tallboy, 
settee and table are two tones of 
green—the green of a lilac leaf, 
soft and tinged with a delicate 
silvery gray 
