hambers and formal approaches. We must preserve a certain
amount of privacy, and have doors that may be closed when need be, but
we must also consider the effect of things when those doors are open,
when the color of one room melts into the color of another.

[Illustration: A PAINTED WALL BROKEN INTO PANELS BY NARROW MOLDINGS]

To me, the most beautiful wall is the plain and dignified painted
wall, broken into graceful panels by the use of narrow moldings, with
lighting fixtures carefully placed, and every picture and mirror hung
with classic precision. This wall is just as appropriate to the six-room
cottage as to the twenty-room house. If I could always find perfect
walls, I'd always paint them, and never use a yard of paper. Painted
walls, when very well done, are dignified and restful, and most
sanitary. The trouble is that too few plasterers know how to smooth the
wall surface, and too few workmen know how to apply paint properly. In
my new house on East Fifty-fifth Street I have had all the walls
painted. The woodwork is ivory white throughout the house, except in the
dining-room, where the walls and woodwork are soft gray. The walls of
most of the rooms and halls are painted a very deep tone of cream and
are broken into panels, the moldings being painted cream like the
woodwork. With such walls you can carry out any color-plan you may
desire.

You would think that every woman would know that walls are influenced by
the exposure of the room, but how often I have seen bleak north rooms
with walls papered in cold gray, and sunshiny south rooms with red or
yellow wall papers! Dull tones and cool colors are always good in south
rooms, and live tones and warm colors in north rooms. For instance, if
you wish to keep your rooms in one color-plan, you may have white
woodwork in all of them, and walls of varying shades of cream and
yellow. The north rooms may have walls painted or papered with a soft,
warm yellow that suggests creamy chiffon over orange. The south rooms
may have the walls of a cool creamy-gray tone.

Whether you paint or paper your walls, you should consider the placing
of the picture-molding most carefully. If the ceiling is very high, the
walls will be more interesting if the picture-molding is placed three or
four feet below the ceiling line. If the ceiling is low, the molding
should be within two inches of the ceiling. These measurements are not
arbitrary, of course. Every room is a law unto itself,