One good way to avoid that sort of disappointment is to put yourself into the hands of an expert and let them choose wallpaper designs for you. But if that plan borders too nearly on the meek-and-mild, then the next best thing, is to select three alternative wallpaper designs for every separate room and try them on the walls before choosing your final pattern.
The prime desire is to select a wall covering that shall be in harmony with the main purpose for which the room itself is destined. You would not, for instance, think of mounting the same wallpaper designs on dining, living and bedroom walls alike. To take the matter a stage further, you would not surely think of papering a room having a low-pitched ceiling with the same wallpaper design that you would choose for another having lofty walls. It is quite obvious again that a style of pattern which would look charming on the wall of a room almost square in shape would have an appearance altogether the reverse of that in an oblong room, with its diminishing perspective.
There is the matter of pictures too, to be regarded in choosing wallpaper designs. Nobody in his senses would desire that walls already decorated with a number of fine paintings, prints or photographs should be further ornamented by overly ornate wallpaper designs or backgrounds. For such a room, self-colored wallpaper, or at most neutral wallpaper designs, are the only possible choices and so on all the way about the residence.
It goes, then, without saying that it is a part, and an important one, of a decorator's business to see that clients, left to their own judgment, do not go hopelessly astray both in the style and treatment of their room walls. If they are good at their trade, the decorator will shepherd their clients gently but firmly into the right way of choosing wallpaper designs; moreover, if they are very good, they will leave them at the end of things believing that they chose upon their own initiative. Of course it sometimes happens that the customer, naturally, possesses a refined, good taste. In that event the expert's duty is immensely lightened for them. Their trouble is mainly with the customer who think they know exactly what they want regarding wallpaper designs -- and don't. If these people eventually arrive at the satisfactory stage it is indeed a feather in the cap of the decorator, though if they be wise they will wear it humbly and almost out of sight. |
