Painted Floors

Usually associated with early American and rural houses, paint-decorated floors date from about the mid-1700s and well into the 19th century. Not all fall into the folk-art category; urban painted floors, done with refined scale and color sense, reflected Federal style. Many geometric effects are sophisticated enough for a 20th-century Colonial Revival entry hall. • Painted floors were most common in New England, but originals have shown up in the Midwest and Texas. Plain painted floors were common in farmhouse kitchens. In fine Federal-era and Greek Revival homes, decorative-painting and faux finishing techniques were used to suggest expensive floors of inlaid wood or marble tiles. • Checkerboard designs, spatter-painting, pinstriped borders, stencil decoration, compass designs, geometric medallions, and trompe l’oeil “rugs” are historical conventions—painted directly on the floorboards, or alternatively…