they should be placed near
centers of importance such as each side of the fireplace, or wide door,
or on each side of some important picture or mirror. If there is a group
of two or three windows which need to be more convincingly drawn
together to form a unit, lights may be placed on each side of the group.
Sidelights can be placed in the center of panels, thus forming a
decoration for the panel, and, flanking paintings or mirrors or
tapestries, make beautiful and formal rooms, especially for the
different periods of French, English, or Italian decoration. This
treatment with simpler forms of fixtures may also be used in our
charming, but more or less nondescript, chintz living-rooms and country
house drawing-rooms or dining-rooms. With a sufficient number of lamps
in the room the side-or wall-lights need not be lighted during the
average stay-at-home evenings but are ready if there is some special
occasion for brilliancy. There are some rooms which are much improved by
having no side-lights at all, all the light coming from lamps. There
should be plenty of floor sockets so placed that lamps may be used on
tables near sofas and armchairs and on the writing table or large
living-room table. It is this proper placing of lamps which has so much
to do with the charm and comfort of a room when evening comes.

In the average home there is no greater mistake in the matter of
lighting than having a room lighted by chandelier or ceiling lights.
Lights at the top of the room, or a foot or two from the ceiling, break
up completely the artistic balance of the room by drawing attention to
them as the brightest spot. They make the room seem smaller both by day
and night, they cast ugly shadows, they do not give sufficient or
correct light for reading or writing, and the glare above one's head is
nerve destroying. When the sun is directly overhead we hasten to put up
sunshades, so why should we deliberately reproduce in our homes the most
trying position of light? The fixtures also are usually extremely ugly.
One sees sometimes in private houses what is called the indirect method
of lighting, which is usually an alabaster bowl suspended by chains from
the ceiling in which the lights are concealed. The reflected light on
the ceiling is supposed to give a suffused and bright light. To my mind
there is something extremely obnoxious about this method used in homes,
for it smacks of department stores and banks and public buildings
genera