DECORATING ADVICE : Wood Paneling Lends a Dandy Air of Early Americana to Yankee Kitchen

Question: My husband and I are planning to redecorate our kitchen with an Americana motif. We have metal cabinets, which we must keep. The top sections are yellow and the bottoms are a brick color. What colors would you suggest for the walls, floor and curtains?

MRS. SMITH NICHOLAS

Answer: The most eye-catching feature in a Colonial kitchen can be the color and texture of wood paneling.

A wood paneling for your kitchen walls would lend an Early American feel to this room. There are many types of wood-grain panels on the market that are easy to install, and they come in hues such as in walnut, cypress and wormwood.

For the window treatment, install Louver shutters and paint them yellow to match your top cabinets. A vinyl brick floor covering would complement the color of your bottom cabinets. Finishing touches could include an old lantern hung over the dining table and a collection of Americana memorabilia, such as old cookie cutters or wrought-iron trivets, hung on the walls.

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Q: We are redecorating our living room, which is very traditional. The carpet, which has a beige-and-green Chinese medallion design, and the beige damask sofa must stay. We have a wing chair and a pull-up chair that can be reupholstered. We also plan to buy new draperies. What colors do you suggest for everything, including the walls?

MRS. SEBASTIAN TATE

A: With traditional living room furniture, try painting the walls an unusual but serene color, such as cantaloupe. The draperies can be beige trimmed with an interesting green and white braid. On a traditional wing chair, why not choose velvet upholstery with a gold and copper cut? Then cover the pull-up chair in bright gold.

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Author’s Advice: A living room is for living. If you want to create a perfect living room that will look like a museum, you are on the wrong track. The most beautiful living rooms are the ones that are used.

Styles, furnishings, textures: There are so many aspects to consider when creating a living room decor. Surely the most basic concern is the color scheme. But how does one select it? I suggest that you keep a scrapbook or folder filled with magazine pictures of rooms you like. When it’s time to choose the scheme for your living room, pull out that folder and see which color combinations you favor.

When planning a room’s color scheme, consider your light source. If your room gets little light, pick sunny colors such as soft lemon, warm sky blue, fawn beige or petal pink for the background. Then use bright fabrics to bring zest to your dark room. Above all, make sure you have enough lamps and lighting fixtures. You might even install strip lighting, a warm white deluxe fluorescent tube, behind your drapery valance to give your window curtains a further glow.

If you have a very bright living room filled with lots of sunshine, you can choose bright garden colors, or you can dramatize your setting with dark walls and bright colors in your furnishings. For instance, with chocolate-brown lacquered walls and white trim, you can use bright-yellow carpeting and upholstery of yellow, cocoa, lettuce green and gold flowers on a chocolate-brown background.

Ceiling height also determines color schemes. To make high ceilings appear lower and cozier, paint them a darker color than your walls. For example, consider pale-blue walls with white trim and a Wedgwood-blue ceiling. If your living room is small and has many doors, paint your doors, walls and ceiling the same color to unify space.

Remember that color determines the “mood” of a room. Do you want a bright, festive living room? Then have fun with lots of contrasting, sharp colors. If a quiet, restful living room is your cup of tea, you may consider a monochromatic color scheme. Quiet and restful does not mean drab and uninteresting, so be sure to add some sharp or vivid colors in the accessories and accents.

Every living room has some wood furniture, tables, cabinets, chairs, etc. These are part of your color scheme, too. Wood paneling must be treated as one of the major colors in a room. Mix woods or wood stains and finishes as you would mix colors.

No matter what rules are laid down by decorating authorities, you must make your own decisions. Your own taste must determine which rules you will adopt and, more importantly, which ones you will ignore.

Any combination of colors is acceptable, if you like it. This is especially true today, when people are using color combinations that were considered impossible just a few years ago. Patterns, prints and stripes are being used together in an exciting, effective manner because their color schemes work together.