Home Decorating Success

For halls and dining rooms plain dark-colored linoleum, costing not less than two dollars a yard makes an 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 economize and your brass bedstead must be used even though you dislike it, you can have it painted the color of your walls. It requires a number of coats. A soft pearl grey is good. Then use a color, or colors, in your silk or chintz bedspread. Sun-proof material in a solid color makes an attractive cover, with a narrow fringe in several colors 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 colored silk shades.

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 colors, make your sofa cushions of plain material to tone down the sofa. If the sofa is a plain color, then tone it up make it more decorative by using cushions of several colors.

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 color.

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 color. How wallpaper looks in the shop is no criterion. As stated sometimes the wrong side of wallpaper gives you the tone you desire.


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