The Key West Citizen

DESIGNING COUPLE—Sidney and Sally Liberman, interior designers, look over their handiwork in room decorated as complete self-contained apartment.
By DOROTHY ROE
Associated Press Women's Editor
You can achieve an atmosphere of gracious living even in a one-room apartment, if you plan well and make the most of each inch of space, says Sidney L. Liberman Jr., a young industrial and interior designer who, with his pretty wife, Sally, is accomplishing some minor miracles for New York apartment dwellers.
The trick is to keep it simple," says Sidney. "In a small room you can achieve a feeling of more space by painting the walls light, the ceiling a darker tone. Drapery and upholstery fabrics should be in small, subdued patterns or solid color, so they don't jump out at you.
"The problem of almost every small apartment is storage space. Book shelves that go from floor to ceiling can provide a pretty good solution, especially if the lower shelves are closed in, like cabinets. A desk can double as a table, when it is covered with a cloth, and its drawers can provide additional storage space.
"Instead of end tables you can have more storage cabinets, with several drawers, to hold records and odds and ends. These take up no more space than the usual end table, but you use all the space."
Sidney and Sally recently decorated one New York room, 12 by 16 feet, as a self-contained apartment. This happened to be a room in a large apartment occupied by a bachelor, who liked the one room so much that he does most of his entertaining there. Here's how they decorated it:
The walls are white, the ceiling a deep grape color, with upholstery on a small love seat, a desk chair and an occasional chair repeating the grape color in a lighter tone.
A bed with upholstered headboard, and an easy chair with matching ottoman are covered in a fabric combining a soft shade of dark and light green.
Floor-to-ceiling book shelves provide storage space, and the desk can be used as a table.
They used big wooden lamps with inexpensive paper shades painted the same color as the lamp base.
Sidney has some other pointers for amateur do-it-yourself decorators: "Don't feel underprivileged if you can't afford wall-to-wall carpeting. Sometimes painted floors are just as effective. Or if the floors are in bad shape, you can buy inexpensive straw or hemp, paint it with deck paint and finish with a coat of shellac. The effect can be terrific.
"If you use pictures on the walls, frame them all alike. You can buy inexpensive wood frames and paint them to match the draperies or coordinate with your wall color.
"You can't go wrong in decorating a small room if you keep everything in different tones of the same color, and reserve your contrasting accents for small things, such as bright pillows.
"If you have a lot of oddly assorted old tables, you can "face-lift" them by sawing off the legs part way to make them lower, then painting them all the same color. Even an old dining table, with the legs cut down, can make a handsome big coffee table that can be the focal point of a room.
"Unpainted stools and benches are handy, too, if you paint them the same color, and use them for coffee tables and occasional tables which can double as extra seats when you have company."