Decorating the Servant Rooms

In the average, or small Victorian house, there was room for much improvement in the treatment and furnishing of servants' bedrooms. The bleak conditions of the upper living quarters was not always from indifference, but because they were out of daily sight. At times it was felt that these rooms were above the zone of ornament and that there was virtue in their very ugliness. In Principles of Home Decoration, Candace Wheeler describes what should be suitable furnishings for servants’ living quarters.

Central hall of servant’s quarters at the Nickerson House in Boston.

On this upper floor the walls were painted in oil paint instead of covered with paper. The floors would be uncarpeted except for bedside rugs which were easily removable. The bedsteads would be of iron, the mattress with changeable covers. The furniture was painted and enameled instead of polished wood to coordinate with a carefully chosen wall color. At times, the servants room featured washable chintz curtains and bed-covers in bright and harmonizing patterns. According to Wheeler, these things had an influence upon the spirit of the home; they were a part of its spiritual beauty, giving a satisfied and approving consciousness to the homemakers, and a sense of happiness in the service of the family.

Often the servant was not a permanent employee of the home; rather, at times, was a fresh importation directly from a city tenement. In this case, according to Wheeler, everything in the room should be able to sustain very radical treatment in the way of scrubbing and cleaning. Wall papers, unwashable rugs and curtains were out of the question; yet even with these limitations it was still possible to make a charming and reasonably inexpensive room, which would be attractive to “cultivated as well as uncultivated taste.”

Although the walls in a servant's bedroom would, for sanitary reasons, be painted in oil paints, Wheeler believed the possibilities of decorative treatment in this medium were by no means limited. All of the lighter shades of green, blue, yellow, and rose were as permanent, and as easily cleaned, as the dull grays and drabs and mud-colors which were often used upon servants’ bedroom walls.

"A good clean gray" that some housewife would instruct the painter to use was actually  the result of a dead mixture of various lively and pleasant tints—any one of which might be charming if used separately, or modified with white.

A small room with walls of a very light spring green, or a pale turquoise blue, or white with the dash of vermilion and touch of yellow ochre which produces salmon pink, was as durable as if it were chocolate brown, or heavy lead-color. Wheeler declared that its effect upon the mind was like a spring day full of sunshine instead of one dark with clouds or lowering storms. Furthermore, if a bedroom for servants' use was on the north or shadowed side of the house, the color should be salmon or rose pink, cream white, or spring green; but if it was on the sunny side, the tint should be turquoise, or pale blue, or a grayish-green, like the green of a field of rye.

With such walls, a white iron bedstead and enameled furniture were needed along with white curtains or flowered chintz which would repeat or contrast with the color of the walls. Also required were bedside and bureau rugs of the tufted cotton which was washable, or rag-rugs of which the colors were "water fast."

If the size of the room would warrant it, a rocking-chair or easy-chair was a part of the furnishings; in addition, the mattress and bed-springs would be of a quality to give ease to tired bones. Wheeler concluded that these things have to do with the spirit of the house; that house decoration at its best was a means of happiness, and no householder could achieve permanent happiness without making the servants of the family sharers in it.

[Images: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA]