The Art of Interior Decoration | Page 5

colour to match the wall paper. To resume, if you like a dull finish,
have the wax rubbed in at intervals, but if you like a glossy background
for rugs, use a heavy varnish after the floors are coloured. This
treatment we suggest for more or less formal rooms. In bedrooms, put

down an inexpensive filling as a background for rugs, or should yours
be a summer home, use straw matting.
For halls and dining-rooms a plain dark-coloured linoleum, costing not
less than two dollars a yard makes and inexpensive floor covering. If it
is waxed it becomes not only very durable but, also, extremely effective,
suggesting the dark tiles in Italian houses. We do not advise the
purchase of the linoleums which represent inlaid floors, as they are
invariably unsuccessful imitations.
If it is necessary to economise and your brass bedstead must be used
even though you dislike it, you can have it painted the colour of your
walls. It requires a number of coats. A soft pearl grey is good. Then use
a colour, or colours, in your silk or chintz bedspread. Sun-proof
material in a solid colour makes an attractive cover, with a narrow
fringe in several colours straight around the edges and also, forming a
circle or square on the top of the bed-cover.
* * * * *
If your gas or electric fixtures are ugly and you cannot afford more
attractive ones, buy very cheap, perfectly plain, ones and paint them to
match the walls, giving decorative value to them with coloured silk
shades.
PLATE III
Shows one end of a very small bedroom with modern painted furniture,
so simple in line and decoration that it would be equally appropriate
either for a young man or for a young woman. We say "young,"
because there is something charmingly fresh and youthful about this
type of furniture.
The colour is pale pistache green, with mulberry lines, the same
combination of colours being repeated in painting the walls which have
a grey background lined with mulberry--the broad stripe--and a narrow
green line. The bed cover is mulberry, the lamp shade is green with
mulberry and grey in the fringe.

On the walls are delightful old prints framed in black glass with gold
lines, and a narrow moulding of gilded oak, an old style revived.
A square of antique silk covers the night table, and the floor is polished
hard wood.
Here is your hall bedroom, the wee guest room in a flat, or the extra
guest room under the eaves of your country house, made equally
beguiling. The result of this artistic simplicity is a restful sense of
space.
[Illustration: Suggestion for Treatment of a Very Small Bedroom]
If you wish to use twin beds and have not wall space for them, treat one
like a couch or day-bed. See Plate II. Your cabinet-maker can remove
the footboard, then draw the bed out into the room, place in a position
convenient to the light either by day or night, after which put a cover of
cretonne or silk over it and cushions of the same. Never put a spotted
material on a spotted material. If your couch or sofa is done in a figured
material of different colours, make your sofa cushions of plain material
to tone down the sofa. If the sofa is a plain colour, then tone it
up--make it more decorative by using cushions of several colours.
If you like your room, but find it cold in atmosphere, try deep cream
gauze for sash curtains. They are wonderful atmosphere producers. The
advantage of two tiers of sash curtains (see Plate IX) is that one can
part and push back one tier for air, light or looking out, and still use the
other tier to modify the light in the room.
Another way to produce atmosphere in a cold room is to use a
tone-on-tone paper. That is, a paper striped in two depths of the same
colour. In choosing any wall paper it is imperative that you try a large
sample of it in the room for which it is intended, as the reflection from
a nearby building or brick wall can entirely change a beautiful yellow
into a thick mustard colour. How a wall paper looks in the shop is no
criterion. As stated sometimes the wrong side of wall paper gives you
the tone you desire.

When rearranging your room do not desecrate the few good antiques
you happen to own by the use of a too modern colour scheme. Have the
necessary modern pieces you have bought to supplement your treasures
stained or painted in a dull, dark colour in harmony with the antiques,
and then use subdued colours in the floor coverings, curtains and
cushions.
If you own no good old ornaments,