These illustrations from the National Plan Service courtesy Indiana Coal & Lumber companay are idealistic – picture perfect – to be sure. Even so, they all include great little ideas to scrutinize and consider replicating in our own little jewel box 40s 50s and 60s ranches, colonials, capes, splits and contemporaries.

Some tips from this model:

• Color scheme – I personally am a huge fan of gold as a paint color for ranch homes.
• Cupola – a great great addition to a postwar ranch, cape or colonial
• Lots of cool ironwork – connected to lighting
• Note the mix of horizontal and vertical wood, stone, and fretwork above the picture window
• The glass block wondow near the little pine tree, and the window on the green mudroom door are delightful
• Ooooh, and look at the planter with horizontal, minimalistic trellis.

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Following up on yesterday’s post about Nancy’s (popular!) kitchen project… and on our Monday blue Television Kitchen… here are kitchen cabinet paint colors straight out of 1953. Lots of good mix-and-match ideas.

I do want to point out that with two-tone kitchen cabinet combinations, you want your darker color on the bottom to ground or anchor the design. It’s interesting to study the color combo’s below – for their use of harmony … and contrast. Honestly, study these things – and over time your design-eye will sharpen! I do think there’s some innate ‘talent’ in design – but like most other pursuits, it’s 99% perspiration! Work hard, study hard, and your ‘instinct’ (and ‘luck’) will get better, ha.

Floors can be light or dark – one guide might be whether you want to bring sunshine (light) into the kitchen, or coziness (medium/dark).

One of the tips you also see written about a lot in the 50s – as everyone was learning to decorate, together — was to choose your principal color scheme based on the direction the room faced. That is, south- and western-facing kitchens will get a lot of sunlight — they will be “hot” — so to counter that, choose ‘cool’ colors… colors in the blue/cool spectrum. North-facing kitchens tend to feel “cold” because of the quality of the sunlight — so use red/hot colors there, to warm things up. Eastern-facing: flexible, ahhh… that morning sunshine! I’ll look for some info on this issue and feature more, in the future.

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The winter is starting to feel like it will never end, here in western Massachusetts. I am not complaining – it’s very pretty, and the rush of spring is like no other. Even so, it feels like time for a BLAST OF COLOR from the 50s. How exuberant are these 1955 Crawford garage doors? To be sure, by ‘55 a family’s car was nearly as important as their house, it seems. So following that logic, why wouldn’t their garage door deserve the royal treatment, too?

P.S. Be sure to click the thumbnail for a really nice big image. I’ve learned a new blogging trick.

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Vintage paint colors are a big issue for virtually everyone, so I’ll start out the new year with these 1950s and 1960s retro paint colors scanned directly from a vintage Sears Harmony House brochure that I bought recently. The scanner does a good job on most of the colors, with the dark pinks and reds only a little off. While these have some similarities to the Sherwin-Williams Suburban Modern palettes, there are many more choices. Look, for example, at Malibu Peach in the upper right — it’s perfect!

This chart is also great because it shows wood stains. No year printed on the piece, but I’ll estimate late 50s.

I’ve kept the actual color chart, below, sized as large as possible. For those of you on Internet Explorer, it probably looks funny in the main view – slides off the screen to the right. Just click once the image in a new window, twice to enlarge it further. I’ve also included the thumbnail to the left – sometimes this opens largest for best possible viewing, it seems. Note, this blog is best viewed in Firefox/Mozilla.

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