In my modeling I try to get close to the era. I am painting shades on my town windows and know they used beige or cream color and also light greens, any other colors, this is a buisness district with shops and such.
Some roller shades were also black. Used where they wanted light totally blocked out such as photo studios, movie theaters, eye doctors offices, etc.
Funny how it is hard to find color pics of everyday 1930’s stuff but I guess color was still for the pros then.
A quick google of 1930’s color photos came up with a few examples. Most of them look like some shade of off-white.
This one has interesting mix:
I’m modelling the late '30s, and use mostly a buff colour, but also dark green and grey. Venetian blinds were also popular (the version with wide slats, not the more modern narrow ones). I haven’t done any of the latter, yet, but will represent them using paint. I believe someone also offers decals for Venetian blinds.
Mine are all done in .010" sheet styrene, with a strip of .020"x.040" styrene cemented to their outside upper edge. It’s easiest to make them as continuous strips, either as a single height or, as in the photos below, at multiple heights. Mask-off the strip, then paint the blinds. Once cut out, the unpainted strip at the top can be cemented, at a point above the lintel, to the window “glass” using solvent-type cement. Because the shade itself doesn’t touch the glass, there’s no marring of the plastic nor any of the fogging associated with ca.
These photos illustrate the procedure:
[IMG]http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/doctorwayne/Some%20kitbas
The Charles Cushman Collection has over 14,000 Kodachromes from the late '30s to the 1960s. Unfortunately about half of them are just pictures of trees, bushes, and flowers. But there are enough gems in the mix to make a search worthwhile. Search New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Here are a couple. It looks like the cream-colored blinds were very common.
Steve S
What I am doing is using the cheap clear plastic that comes with the kits (working on a very kitbashed version of merchants row). Then I paint the inside the shade color. For blinds I start with black and a stiff brush to make the slats, then a cream color and the a black coating, found this better than any print version I found. For curtains I use a print and adhear it to the back of the glass with clear gloss acrylic varnish.
I seem to remember in some very old houses (very old maiden great-aunts) I visited when I was a “yonker” back in the late 40s (I would have been 5 or 6) had cloth roller shades with fringes on the bottom. A dark off-white, IIRC.