Divide the inside of a dome into coffers that shrink in step with the meridians as they rise, so that their perspective deepens the dome and draws the eye to the light of the lantern.
Each room ornamented according to its rank
Ornament the rooms according to their rank and use: the state rooms of the principal floor richest, with the whole entablature, the best ceilings and the grandest chimneypieces and doorcases; the family’s rooms plainer, with the frieze and cornice or the cornice alone; the offices plain.
Vitruvius makes propriety (decor) one of the principles of architecture: a work is fitting when its appearance answers to its purpose, to custom and to nature, so that a magnificent interior has an entrance to match, and in the houses of the great the rooms are ample and finely finished while those of ordinary people need no such display.
The English houses of the eighteenth century show the rule at work within one house. At Houghton or Kedleston the hall, the saloon and the drawing room on the principal floor have the full entablature, the compartmented or coffered ceiling and the chimneypiece with its overmantel; the bedrooms above have a simple cornice and a plainer chimneypiece; the offices in the basement are limewashed. The designer ranks each room by its use, the floor it is on and the kind of building, and gives the cornice’s parts by rank: which parts go with which rank is editorial.
Related rules
Make the architrave round a door or window as wide as a sixth part of the opening’s breadth, and dress the openings of the principal floor more richly than those of the storeys above and below, with a frieze and cornice, and on the grandest a pediment.
architrave = ⅙ × width of the light
Break the architrave of a door or window with blocks of plain stone laid across it, alternately larger and smaller, and set a keystone in the middle of the head.
Light the hall over the front door with a fanlight: a half-round light with bars radiating like the ribs of a fan, or, after 1770, an elliptical one, often with narrow lights at the sides of the door.
Set urns or statues on the pedestals of a balustrade crowning a front, over the piers and the angles, so that the skyline is broken at regular intervals.
On the angles of a pediment set acroteria as high as half the tympanum, and on its apex one an eighth higher.
side acroteria = ½ tympanum height; middle = side × 9⁄8
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Each room ornamented according to its rank”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/decorum-of-rooms. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.