DECORATING ADVICE : Yellow Walls Set Off Blue and White Trim
Question: Please help me! I want to freshen up my bedroom, but I don’t have a lot of money to spend. I am pretty handy with a sewing machine, and I’d like to make slipcovers for existing pull-up chairs and one slipper chair. I’d also like new draperies. Can you give me some ideas for how to pull the room together?
SELMA SECAUCUS
Answer: Your letter does not tell me the color of your walls, nor does it let me know what you have on your floors. Some readers send samples of their preferences to give me a clue to color preference.
But because most people like yellow with a dash of blue and white, let’s begin by painting the walls a soft daffodil yellow and all the trim white.
If you have handsome pine floors, let them be, but accent them with a throw rug of white woven cotton with royal blue bands.
For curtains, choose a print of yellow and blue flowers with green leaves on a white background, and hang them on black wrought iron rods.
Choose a blue-and-white check for chair upholstery and slipcovers.
Q: We have had a marlite covering on our kitchen walls for more than 20 years. It has been washed so much it looks dull and dingy. No one knows if it can be painted or papered or what to do to change it. What can I do? We’ve been told the house is 150 years old.
WILLIAM CALDWELL
A: Marlite is a material that was designed to repel glue and dirt and grime. Do not try to paper or paint the marlite surface. You’ll never be happy with the results.
Get an estimate from a carpenter to see what it will cost to have the marlite removed and replaced with drywall. Once drywall is installed, you can decide how to treat the drywall surfaces--with tiles, vinyl or washable paint.
There are many practical ways to decorate walls. You’ll have lots of fun discovering the newest decorating ways.
Good luck!
Q: What do you think of wallpaper borders?
BETTE CALLINGS
A: Border the windows! Border the upper wall surfaces at the crown molding line! Border the lower wall surfaces above the baseboard! Border the walls just above the tile line with a washable border wall covering!
Wallpaper borders that go with coordinated all-over wallpapers have hit the decorating scene in force.
They’re here in both French and English styles. And all of the wall covering designs I choose these days are created with borders in mind. Borders can be used in every room--in the nursery, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and living room.
There are borders that feature designs including sailboats, shells, strawberries, flowers of every variety, stripes, jungle animals, baseball scenes, trellis work and letters of the alphabet.
For a recent project, I used a flowery border of lavenders, pinks and reds on a black background on the section of wall directly below the crown molding in the living room. I have also used the flowery border around all the door moldings.
Walls under the border are painted a very pale lavender, and the carpeting is a bright red.
The border paper comes with a coordinating fabric that also has been used for club-chair upholstery, quilted to pattern.
The sofa in the room is a nubby white, accented with throw cushions of the black background chintz as well as with some lavender cushions.
I have decorated the walls with a series of botanical flowers matted in black, which is a great accent color in the setting, and framed in white and gold.
Lamps in the room are also black, and they’re outfitted with white silk, accordion-pleated shades.
The room is alive with fresh green ferns that hang in a bright corner and with potted fresh garden flowers. The flowers are placed in clay pots with clay liners to protect the bright red carpeting.
Curtains in the room are white sheers topped with a valance of the garden chintz, lined in bright red to pick up the red in the carpeting.
Got a decorating question? Write to: Carleton Varney, Home Design, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. He regrets that he cannot answer all mail but will select questions of general interest to answer in this column.