Designing my Art Deco House with 1920s Instructions

A lot of decorating to do. But it seems kind of weird to go to modern sources like Pinterest for an old house. So let's do some interior design using 100 year old sources. I'm starting with my living room, dining room, and sunroom since they all connect and would need to work together. These rooms are the perfect example of why it's important to at least go back to some of the source material, even if it's going to be modernized, which I will be doing a little of. My living room is probably the most obvious, not just the clear things like the fireplace or even arched doorways. There will be two eventually, but even the proportion of the room and the features in it are distinct to the 1930s. A couple of decades earlier, in the craftsman's style, the front would have likely featured a centered up large set of windows, perhaps with a bench in front. Instead, I have two relatively large windows, but they are offset. The fireplace also isn't centered, and there's only one window on the left side. If I tried to do a symmetrical room, like so many styles and eras prefer, I would make the architecture look unbalanced. But the modern style of the 1920s and 30s thrives on what they called occult balance, breaking up spaces into smaller vignettes and throwing focus at a few choice areas. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I have actually been reading through these publications for months. It's not just a matter of how to arrange a few frames on the wall or what angle to place a chair at. I maybe have enough furniture to fill half of these rooms. So every choice I make, from pillow to dining room table, needs to be made in harmony. And honestly, it's a little overwhelming. I'm hoping to fill as much space as possible with antiques for a lot of reasons, different proportions, finishes, and details from most modern options, not to mention the lower cost and sustainability. 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I'm not just looking for any random pictures I can find, I want to understand the thought behind these designs and how they would have incorporated them into regular homes. There's so much material digitized on the internet now that it's difficult to say what the average person would have had available to them back then. However, in the piles of print I came across one very helpful book from 1925, titled Interior Decorating for Everybody. This book follows Jane through her first tiny apartment, a married apartment, and a house. The most interesting part isn't her design decisions, it's that the author discusses how Jane makes these decisions, whether through advice from books, magazines, salesmen, or friends. Where she gets her knowledge from is a constant topic in the book. And clearly meant to help educate the reader on where to do their own research. She started off with a few basics of design type books, quoting quite a few in the text, and through trial and error in her first place, came up with a very long list of general principles that she apparently was able to recite to a rapt group of friends one evening after they were in awe at how well furnished her room was. I would say that this seems like a stretch of a situation, but there's a few thousand of you watching me do the same thing right now, so I guess not? Most of Jane's list is pretty straightforward. Think about color and balance of size, print, and texture. The basic, constantly repeated rules of darker floor, lighter ceiling, dark colors make the room smaller, light colors make it larger. Put cold colors on the southern end of the house and warmer colors on the northern. Buy good quality instead of too much stuff. If you do have to buy cheaper things, don't mix it with expensive because it'll be more obvious. If you want to read in detail every one of the 19 principles, just pause here. There's nothing really shocking, to be honest, and I'm pretty sure I've heard every single one on both HGTV of the 2000s and on social media today. It's really just a summation of the hundreds of interior design books that were published in the early 20th century, meant for young women like Jane to understand how to set up house if it didn't come naturally. In Jane's second round of design, now with a husband and a lot more experience, she goes to more local stores to get advice on furniture. Apparently the antique store was over her head in whether things were quality or not, so she's sticking to modern where she knows that she can get good quality. Pretty much the opposite of today, notably. Most of her written-out decision-making focuses on things like fabric choices and veneer versus solid wood. Basically, does she spend more for better quality? Usually yes. More for fashionable styles? Always no. Even if all of her friends are buying cheaper furniture and painting it to be on trend, it doesn't fit her current style, so she should get the nicer classic things instead. The next time around, she's moving to a house in another state. A much bigger change. So Jane writes off to the Division of Housing and Building to have the government send her a range of publications that are a bit of DIY and things to know about owning and maintaining a home. From Better Homes in America, she received lists of things you would need to buy, like kitchen supplies. Then onto the free booklets from every manufacturer of household supplies, like paint, flooring, lights, trim. There were magazines and even exhibits of the ideal home shown in articles. The most impactful thing that Jane discovered was a local modern home full of electrical appliances. All of these things are still available to us today, so I started with scanning through some of the other interior design books, which were incredibly thorough, but more of an art 101 course mixed with how to make a space livable for a family. They understandably leave out a lot of up-to-date design advice, since that's seasonal, and a book ideally makes it at least a few years. Since I don't find myself in need of color charts, the most useful part of many of these books for me is seeing the variety of room layouts and problem-solving techniques. The manufacturers' booklets, however, are an absolute treasure trove, mostly because they tend to actually be in color. So many of the books are just in black and white and have limited prints. This wouldn't do for a company selling paint, rugs, and other decor. They always show their products in fashionable but achievable settings as well. It's a good metric of what was middle class, but aspirational. Essentially, what this house actually would have looked like decades ago. It's the magazines and home showcases that really inspired me, however. One of my favorite finds was a book about modern style from the 1939 New York World's Fair. It essentially took all of the high-style French and European designs and showed how they could be simplified for the average American home without losing their intent. I admit I am largely inspired by the art that comes out of French books during this time, not of everyday homes, but of grandly designed ones. Unfortunately, I don't have massive domed ceilings and tons of architectural details, like columns or inset panels. Clearly, this problem isn't just mine. The author emphasizes how feature elements can be used. A series of low bookcases instead of tall ones, or a prominent light the room is organized around. Strip down the parts that don't appeal or don't work, but try to find what feature you are fond of and look at how they built the room to balance it. Things like repeated shapes, patterns, and proportions. So with a little bit of permission to pull ideas from some more elaborate designs, I headed off to find as many images and magazines as I could, including a few from some French archives. Ironically, I ended up finding tons of images from the salons I talked about in the Art Deco video, which would have been great examples. But rather than give you a long, long list of all of the recommendations and rules I gathered up from all of this research, I figured I could just show you how I plan to implement them, inspired a little bit by their artwork as well. So let's start in the living room. The feature here is obviously the fireplace. They say that whatever I choose to do should draw attention to it rather than compete. Probably not the right place for a busy wallpaper or lots of blaring various colors. I ended up choosing a darker rust tone to contrast with the limestone, play down the heavier window trim, and allow my black sofa to not stick out too much. I would still like some small accents on the architecture of the room, like the arched doorways, so I was thinking about a narrow border like this image. I could do a wider style around the doorways then. For layout, I placed the sofa facing the fireplace and have set a library table at the back of it. This apparently was such a common method that one book jokingly said not to do it, just to be contrary. I may look for a low and wide piece that is a bit more art deco in style to replace the library table though, but similar proportions. I have two chairs temporarily on either side of the fireplace, but they'll be moving to the sunroom, so I don't have to recover them just for color purposes. I grabbed an image of a slip chair so I could play with color options, but honestly the original rose tone blends in very well without disappearing completely. The weight and curves are also similar to the sofa, rather than something with a busy floral print or lots of woodwork. When it comes to layout, I don't have a TV, so the main grouping can face the direction of the fireplace while I use the leftover space for walking paths and my desk. While I do have lots of other small furniture for the room like a vintage radio, I don't have anything tall. The bookcase is just temporary. I think something narrow and tall is needed on the other side of the fireplace to balance out the weight of the window. Maybe also next to the desk to balance the doorway. Once the half wall is filled, there will be space for something there as well, but probably shorter than the other two pieces. Most of the images I looked through placed distinct furniture pieces, essentially in varying proportions of rectangles, in each section of the room that were framed up by the corners and other features. Oftentimes they did this in an easy way by using a little inset into the wall, but since I don't have that, I'm essentially treating each wall space, whether between windows or between doors and corners, as its own little inset of a sort. Chairs and other smaller items then hover away from the walls instead. This works so much better in tandem with the asymmetry of the room and the low window height. Putting something like the sofa up against the windows would be placing all of the heavy weight on one side of the room, so the focus would go over to that side of the room and I would struggle to balance the weight out in an area that's got doorways and walking paths and can't put anything heavier over there. I'll talk more about the curtains in one of the next videos, but I stuck to the color of the walls again to not draw attention to the uneven spacing, but instead use them to frame up other parts of the room. The space between the two windows isn't terribly large, so a big piece of furniture isn't an option there, but something like the radio fits perfectly with the shape, as the curtains are pulled back. Just repeating the system of framing each negative space instead of the whole room at once. I also have a larger, darker carpet on the way. This will also be one of my major uses of print in the room, since most everything else is solid in color. I won't take up the entire room with the carpet, however, but I will use it to frame just the seating area. When it comes to lights, I'm still debating. There are actually outlets above the fireplace that I can only assume were meant for sconces, or originally were sconces and then turned into outlets. I'd like to return to that, rather than large outlets in the most visible area of the room. Exactly what lights or what shape is still unanswered, though. I do have a new ceiling light waiting to be installed that should mimic the triangular shape in the mantle. When it comes to the smaller decor, framed art, bases, etc., I'm not going to plan it out in detail just yet. I think finding a few furniture items first while collecting a range of objects that fit the color and line of the room makes sense to start. The dining room is a completely different set of problems. Instead of a large table in the middle of the room, which would force me to walk out and around it constantly to get around the house, I'm planning to use this space for my filming setup. Ideally, I'll be able to place the settee, library table, and a few other late 19th century pieces in a manner similar to how I had it before. They'll fill up one wall of the room, but won't stick out into the space. I do have a buffet for all of my grandmother's china that just squeezes in on the opposite wall. In the middle, a small table I found on sale a couple of days after getting the house. It's meant for a parlor space or other small living room, and it's just perfect for a daily dining table. At least for now. Well, I don't have any other. So layout and furniture isn't my problem here. Instead, it's what to do with the walls. Because this room is going to be almost entirely late 19th century or gothic style furniture in a dark walnut, I didn't want to choose walls that would be at odds with that. Pastels and bright colors, light floral prints, blocky stripes, or even solid colors in general would just leave the ornate furniture, which all sits fairly low, looking heavy and dark. I decided on a richer color palette, which, yes, will make the room dark, admittedly. But as it's a filming space where I need to control the light sources manually, that's not really a bad thing. At first, I wanted to do a historic style wallpaper with metallic hints to reflect the light and bring the eye up to balance the low furniture. But after months looking at so many samples, I wasn't able to find anything that quite fit. Some were the right colors. Others had a softer Victorian feel. Some were a little more gothic. And others trended towards the 1930s style of the home. It all complemented with something rather than blending it together. So I gave up and found a stencil instead. I've done loads of stenciling in the past, child of the 1980s after all, so I'm pretty confident in the technique. It allows me to find a pattern that I like, but also choose all of the colors. I went with a design that's a little more art deco-leaning, but with a repeat that feels like a classic damask and colors that will work with the settee and the rooms on either side of it. Even when houses aren't open floor plan, you can still see from room to room. Rust leading to plum and rose should keep the transition soft. My only question that is still up in the air is how to choose proportions for the stencil pattern. While there is a chair rail in the room already, I will need to either replace part of it or remove it once the wall is rebuilt. I can place the print above or move the proportions to a more common 1920s style. There's also the option to just do the entire wall space or to break it up into frames. The last one seems very common in the French designs, but they also assume a massively tall seating. I haven't been able to find much on wallpaper layout from this era just yet, so I'm still looking to see if there's any advice to be had, but I do welcome opinions. Continuing on through to the sunroom, this seems to be the most versatile and most prolific room in design books. Not only was it very trendy at the time, but it was seen as the room to fix all of your house problems. What space do you need right now? It could be a children's playroom, a glorified porch, a dining room, a space for plants, or a second living room for privacy. I'm planning to use it for books and storage to start, but eventually it will be a true dining room space with comfortable chairs for reading, tea, or breakfast. Essentially, the social space to fit lots of people, or a quiet room to enjoy the sunshine and garden once I rip out the overgrown bushes that are blocking my windows. I'm not going to overplan this space just yet, since it can be so many things. Right now, it's just the room full of boxes, unfortunately, but all of the various sunroom examples still focus on the practicality and informality of the space. They say that this is the space to have fun with color and pattern. With all of the light, they also recommend choosing a cooler color. I ended up with a lighter green tone that I'm going to accent with a mustard yellow. The accent color was something I went back and forth on for a long time, to be honest. It was decided when I had to order new shelving. You might recall these are only around six inches deep, and therefore can't hold most of my books. I want to put doors on the bottom portion of the new shelves to be able to hide away things from both sight and bright light, and settled on these woven rattan-filled ones. They give a nice sunny glow, so I thought it would be fun to do yellow inside the shelves to really make them pop. I'll also have the darker green chairs to round out the color scheme. Eventually, I will need a rug or two to frame out the spaces of use, but I don't know what size just yet, and since this is the main way out of the backyard, I have to find options that can deal with some muddy paws tracking through. I'll also need a table and chairs, though I think I'll do some benches in the corner so the table can be tucked back, but also have a garden view. Plants and books will be the main decor, really, though I hope to find some fun prints for the curtains and bench cushions. That was one of the other major features throughout. The very pointed use of textiles. They seem to be anywhere there was a gap, even just swagged on a blank wall. It does seem a more dynamic way to impart texture, shape, and even print without heavy furniture or blocky frames. Theoretically also cheaper. I'll keep updating the progress of these rooms over the next few months, as I research things like the history of curtains, paint, carpets, and even sunrooms. Hopefully paint isn't too far off, but at least now I have a better idea of what I need to be looking for. But be sure to subscribe and follow along so you don't miss out on all of the exciting design stuff coming your way. And don't forget to check out ThredUP. Just tap my link and use code RUDOLPH50 to shop my ThredUP faves and receive 50% off your first order plus free shipping.