Rusticate the lowest storey or the basement, its stones marked by deep joints, as the plainest and strongest part of the building; keep the dressed stone, the orders and the ornament for the storeys above.
Each room its own furniture
Furnish the dining parlour with solid, substantial mahogany, without trifling ornament, and the drawing room with the lightest and most elegant furniture in the house, in satinwood and painted work, in keeping with its decoration; the library with bookcases and a library table, the bedchamber with what serves sleep and dressing.
Sheraton says the drawing room is to concentrate the elegance of the whole house, the room where the company is received; the dining parlour is a room of business, its furniture of mahogany, solid and plain. His plates show both rooms furnished, with the pier tables, sofas and chairs against the walls.
Related rules
Bind the corners of a wall with dressed stones laid alternately long and short on each face, so that they bond into both walls and mark the angle of the building.
Over a window in a brick front, turn a flat arch of soft red bricks rubbed and cut (gauged) to radiate from a centre below, laid with the finest joints, and give it a keystone of stone where the front is dressed in stone.
Glaze the sash windows in panes of equal size, three across: six over six on the ordinary storeys, six over nine on the tall windows of the principal floor, and three over three in the low windows of the attic.
Design the furniture of a principal room with the room: the chairs, settees and stools covered in the stuff of the walls or the bed, the tables and glasses drawn to the architecture of the piers and the chimneypiece, so that the room and its furniture are of one manner and one date.
In the formal room, stand the furniture against the walls and leave the middle of the room clear: a pier table (with its glass above) between each pair of windows, the sofa facing the fire, a chair either side of the chimneypiece, the chairs ranged round the walls in a line with the dado, to be brought out when wanted and put back after; and keep each wall symmetrical about its middle, its chimneypiece or its windows.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Each room its own furniture”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/sheraton-rooms. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.