Remember you must never put a spot on a spot! The colour of your walls
once established, keep in mind two things: that to be agreeable to the
artistic eye your ceilings must be lighter than your sidewalls, and
your floors darker. Broadly speaking, it is Nature's own arrangement,
green trees and hillsides, the sky above, and the dark earth beneath
our feet. A ceiling, if lighter in tone than the walls, gives a sense
of airiness to a room. Floors, whether of exposed wood, completely
carpeted, or covered by rugs, must be enough darker than your
sidewalls to "hold down your room," as the decorators say.

If colour is to play a conspicuous part, brightly figured silks and
cretonnes being used for hangings and upholstery, the floor covering
should be indefinite both as to colour and design. On the other hand,
when rugs or carpets are of a definite design in pronounced colours,
particularly if you are arranging a living-room, make your walls,
draperies and chair-covers plain, and observe great restraint in the
use of colour. Those who work with them know that there is no such
thing as an ugly colour, for all colours are beautiful. Whether a
colour makes a beautiful or an ugly effect depends entirely upon its
juxtaposition to other tones. How well French milliners and
dressmakers understand this! To make the point quite clear, let us
take magenta. Used alone, nothing has more style, more beautiful
distinction, but in wrong combination magenta can be amazingly,
depressingly ugly. Magenta with blue is ravishing, beautiful in
the subtle way old tapestries are: it touches the imagination whenever
that combination is found.


PLATE VI