Where Lamps Should Be Placed

When lamps are used they should be placed with the same strict regard for proper position as with side lights. They should always be arranged to call attention to especially attractive pieces of furniture or to decorative groups of furniture, although they, at the same time, may serve the purpose of comfort for reading or sewing.

The Esthetic Value Of The Lamp

In these days of reawakened interest in interior decoration, people now deliberately plan for an effect by the use of lamps which their grandfathers unconsciously achieved. The glow of warmth and cheeriness cast by the evening lamp gives to the living room at the end of the day what the burning logs in the fireplace gave in the morning hours - an almost spiritual center which attracts, not only the members of the family, but the casual guest as well. To successfully give this effect, the light must be subdued and softened to the proper value by the use of truly artistic shades. These shades are not the grotesque affairs used on the gas lamps of some time ago. They no longer look like ornate garden hats or flounced petticoats. They are designed to fit in with the furnishings of the room in color, texture, and style.

Colors

Different rooms and different uses require different colors given by the shading of the lamps and lights. For reading or sewing a soft green is considered by many people to be the most restful hue, but others can do good work only in a faintly yellow glow. Lights screened by shades in the various tones of rose are unquestionably the ones best suited to all festive occasions, if the color is not too brilliant in intensity.

Materials

Different materials may be used for shades, depending upon the decorative style of the room. China silk may be shirred on to a wire frame and finished with a simple gimp, and decorated silks of the heavier variety are also often used stretched plain upon the frame. For rooms fitted up in mission style a more severe type of shade should be used made of Japanese basketry or of art glass in single hue and shaded effects. Parchment or even heavy water-color paper can often be used for the same purpose with astonishing success. A small amount of ingenuity, only, is needed, to make charming shades of all sizes at very little cost, and there is almost nothing in the line of household furnishings for which merchants ask such large prices in proportion to the value of the materials used in their construction.

Period Styles In Fixtures

As with shades, so also a sense of appropriateness should be strictly regarded in the choice of lighting fixtures with reference to the particular type of furniture used in the room. A period room should have the lights with their shades in the same period of design. In a room furnished in the spirit of the period of Louis XVI the lighting fixtures should be very dainty and graceful. If there are shades, they may be very fragile and delicate, trimmed with tinsel and garlanded with ribbon flowers. Often, however, the most beautiful effects are gained without shades, when tiny electric bulbs are placed upon the tips of candle-like supports. This plan of lighting is especially effective for the side lights in the dining room, with shaded electric candles for the table, and is equally suitable for the French, English, and colonial periods, although the standards of the fixtures would vary with the structural design of the furniture with which it is used. Jacobean and Chippendale should be rather heavy in shape; Hepplewhite, for example, would again call for more delicate metal work. Straight-lined metal and wood fixtures are now manufactured to carry out the Craftsman and Mission ideas, and even in wicker and grass there are lamps to correspond with the furniture.

The Importance Of Artificial Light As A Part Of A Scheme Of Interior Decoration

Great care should always be exercised in deciding upon the style, color, and arrangement of the lights of each room, for it is possible to make or mar the complete artistic effect of a home by the attention or lack of attention which has been given to the illuminating system.

References

De Wolfe, Elsie The House in Good Taste. The Century Company, New York, 1913. Lamps and Sidelights, Chapter VIII (Furniture Of Modern Design) Herts, B. Russell The Decoration and Furnishing of Apartments. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1915. Fixtures, Part II, Chapter IX (Furniture Woods). Northend, Mary H. Colonial Homes and Their Furnishings. Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1912. History, Chapter XIII. Parsons, Frank Alvah Interior Decoration, Its Principles and Practice; Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, N. Y., 1915. Methods of Lighting, pp. 266-268. Wallick, Ekin.

Inexpensive Furnishings in Good Taste. Hearst's International Library Co., New York, 1915. Lamps and Lamp Shades, Chapter VII (Modern Period Furniture And Its Use).