If your house or flat is small you can gain a great effect of space by keeping the same colour scheme throughout—­that is, the same colour or related colours.  To make a small hall and each of several small rooms on the same floor different in any pronounced way, is to cut up your home into a restless, unmeaning checkerboard, where one feels conscious of the walls and all limitations.  The effect of restful spaciousness may be obtained by taking the same small suite and treating its walls, floors and draperies, as has been suggested, in the same colour scheme or a scheme of related keys in colour.  That is, wood browns, beiges and yellows; violets, mauves and pinks; different tones of greys; different tones of yellows, greens and blues.

Now having established your suite and hall all in one key, so that there is absolutely no jarring note as one passes from room to room, you may be sure of having achieved that most desirable of all qualities in interior decoration—­repose.  We have seen the idea here suggested carried out in small summer homes with most successful results; the same colour used on walls and furniture, while exactly the same chintz was employed in every bedroom, opening out of one hall.  By this means it was possible to give to a small, unimportant cottage, a note of distinction otherwise quite impossible.  Here, however, let us say that, if the same chintz is to be used in every room, it must be neutral in colour—­a chintz in which the colour scheme is, say, yellows in different tones, browns in different tones, or greens or greys.  To vary the character of each room, introduce different colours in the furniture covers, the sofa-cushions and lamp-shades.  Our point is to urge the repetition of a main background in a small group of rooms; but to escape monotony by planning that the accessories in each room shall strike individual notes of decorative, contrasting colour.

PLATE II

     A room with modern painted furniture is shown here.  Lines and
     decorations Empire.

     Note the lyre backs of chairs and head board in day-bed. 
     Treatment of this bed is that suggested where twin beds are used
     and room affords wall space for but one of them.

[Illustration:  Bedroom in Country House.  Modern Painted Furniture.]

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What to do with old floors is a question many of us have faced.  If your house has been built with floors of wide, common boards which have become rough and separated by age, in some cases allowing dust to sift through from the cellar, and you do not wish to go to the expense of all-over carpets, you have the choice of several methods.  The simplest and least expensive is to paint or stain the floors.  In this case employ a floor painter and begin by removing all old paint.  Paint removers come for the purpose.  Then have the floors planed to make them even.