I think the ideal bedroom should be planned so that a small ante-chamber should separate it from the large outside corridor.  The ideal arrangement is an ante-chamber opening on the boudoir, or sitting-room, then the bedroom, with its dressing-room and bath in back.  This outer chamber insures quiet and privacy, no matter how small it may be.  It may serve as a clothes-closet, by filling the wall with cupboards, and concealing them with mirrored doors.  The ante-chamber need not be a luxury, if you plan your house carefully.  It is simply a little well of silence and privacy between you and the hall outside.

[Illustration:  MISS CROCKER’S LOUIS XVI.  BED]

To go on with my ideal bedroom:  the walls, I think, should be simply paneled in wood, painted gray or cream or white, but if wood cannot be afforded a plastered wall, painted or distempered in some soft tone, is the best solution.  You will find plain walls and gay chintz hangings very much more satisfying than walls covered with flowered papers and plain hangings, for the simple reason that a design repeated hundreds of times on a wall surface becomes very, very tiresome, but the same design in a fabric is softened and broken by the folds of the material, and you will never get the annoying sense of being impelled to count the figures.

One of the bedrooms illustrated in this book shows an Elizabethan paper that does not belong to the “busy” class, for while the design is decorative in the extreme you are not aware of an emphatic repeat.  This is really an old chintz design, and is very charming in blues and greens and grays on a cream ground.  I have seen bedrooms papered with huge scrolls and sea shells, many times enlarged, that suggest the noisy and methodical thumping of a drum.  I cannot imagine anyone sleeping calmly in such a room!

This bedroom is eminently suited to the needs of a man.  The hangings are of a plain, soft stuff, accenting one of the deep tones of the wall covering, and the sash curtains are of white muslin.  The furniture is of oak, of the Jacobean period.  The bed is true to its inspiration, with turned legs and runners, and slatted head and foot boards.  The legs and runners of the bed were really inspired by the chairs and tables of the period.  This is an excellent illustration of the modern furniture that may be adapted from old models.  It goes without saying that the beds of that period were huge, cumbersome affairs, and this adapted bed is really more suitable to modern needs in size and weight and line than an original one.

There are so many inspirations for bedrooms nowadays that one finds it most difficult to decide on any one scheme.  One of my greatest joys in planning the Colony Club was that I had opportunity to furnish so many bedrooms.  And they were small, pleasant rooms, too, not the usual impersonal boxes that are usually planned for club houses and hotels.  I worked out the plan of each bedroom as if I were to