Historic Interior Design Films

Purchase on DVD
Historic Interior Design Films

This compilation features home interior design and decorating ideas from the 1950s – 1960s. Topics include, color theory, paint color selection, re-modeling, designer products, function vs. utility, painting, and the American obsession with style and relaxation.

Included Films:

Color Keying in Art and Living

Produced: 1950

Length: 10 Minutes

The science of color may not seem useful until you realize how much color affects our daily lives through mood control, consumerism psychology, and art. “Color Keying in Art and Living” explains through scientific terms and machinery how color relationships and coordination are applied to art, hair styling, eyes, complexion, dress and home decoration. It begins with an explanation of light primaries and pigment primaries and how different color and light mixtures form secondary colors. This explanation leads to color keying or the art of placing complementary colors in proximity to one another to create flattering or dramatic effects. A wonderful look at how science paves the way for commerce and the arts.

Color Harmony for Your Home

Produced: 1956

Length: 20 Minutes

What is found in the hills and bright blue sky, in the fields of ripened grain and the unexpected places of bright surprises? It is color, the harp string of beauty, the keyboard of mood. “Color Harmony for Your Home,” begins with a comparison of how all the beautiful color that makes a house a home comes from the beauty of nature. From there it takes a look at picking the perfect color patterns for the décor of the home by the simple use of the colorizer wheel. Choosing the perfect paint to match often ridiculous looking 1950s furniture has never been simpler – simply match the furniture to color wheel and voila! Color has never been more prosaic and adored.

Something New From Something Old

Produced: 1958

Length: 13 Minutes

A young couple on a budget cant afford to spend outrageous amounts of cash on buying new furniture. Instead they take what they have and refurbish it making diamonds out of coal. In Something New From Something Old, Jack and Jill show different ways to make the most out of a limited budget, perusing antique stores and getting millions of uses out of varnish, paint stripper, and spray paint. By the end the viewer not only know who to turn a bed into a couch but is left with the impression that a little ingenuity, paint, and determination, can make even the most humble of apartments feel like a mansion.

Let Yourself Go

Produced: 1940

Length: 8 Minutes

Mad scientist meets the automobile is this quirky Jam Handy produced advertisement for cars. A mattress show room starts out the bizarre look at how relaxation through space utilization and minimizing distractions, is key to enjoying an automobile. Various tests on subjects explore what stress looks like so that the people enjoying their ride in a spacious, relaxing car, appear all the more relaxed and at home. Let Yourself Go is a testament to zany advertisement techniques that resulted in a time of the strongest automobile sales the country has ever seen.

The Hillsborough with New Hideaway Styling

Produced: 1959

Length: 3 Minutes

This silent film promotes a cool television console model that folds into a piece of furniture when not in use.

American Look

Produced: 1958

Length: 28 Minutes

Through the arts and crafts of the American stylists the things around us are made to express our own free spirits and desires. American Look celebrates the stylists who make American living in the 1950s possible. Everything from cameras, furniture, buildings, is explored stylistically with emphasis placed on the new automobiles of the time. Design has never looked so good as in this informational and historical glimpse into a world of imagination and innovation.