I think the first thing to be considered about a dressing-room is its utility.  Here no particular scheme of decoration or over-elaboration of color is in place.  Everything should be very simple, very clean and very hygienic.  The floors should not be of wood, but may be of marble or mosaic cement or clean white tiles, with a possible touch of color.  If the dressing-room is bathroom also, there should be as large a bath as is compatible with the size of the room.  The combination of dressing-room and bathroom is successful only in those large houses where each bedroom has its bath.  I have seen such rooms in modern American houses that were quite as large as bedrooms, with the supreme luxury of open fireplaces.  Think of the comfort of having one’s bath and of making one’s toilet before an open fire!  This is an outgrowth of our passion for bedrooms that are so be-windowed they become sleeping-porches, and we may leave their chill air for the comfortable warmth of luxurious dressing-rooms.

[Illustration:  By permission of the Butterick Publishing Co.  FURNITURE PAINTED WITH CHINTZ DESIGNS]

If I were giving advice as to the furnishing of a dressing-room, in as few words as possible, I should say:  “Put in lots of mirrors, and then more mirrors, and then more!” Indeed, I do not think one can have too many mirrors in a dressing-room.  Long mirrors can be set in doors and wall panels, so that one may see one’s self from hat to boots.  Hinged mirrors are lovely for sunny wall spaces, and for the tops of dressing-tables.  I have made so many of them.  One of green and gold lacquer was made to be used on a plain green enameled dressing-table placed squarely in the recess of a great window.  I also use small mirrors of graceful contour to light up the dark corners of dressing-rooms.

Have your mirrors so arranged that you get a good strong light by day, and have plenty of electric lights all around the dressing-mirrors for night use.  In other words, know the worst before you go out!  In my own dressing-room the lights are arranged just as I used to have them long ago in my theater dressing-room when I was on the stage.  I can see myself back, front and sides before I go out.  Really, it is a comfort to be on friendly terms with your own back hair!  I lay great stress on the mirrors and plenty of lights, and yet more lights.  Oh, the joy, the blessing of electric light!  I think every woman would like to dress always by a blaze of electric light, and be seen only in the soft luminosity of candle light—­how lovely we would all look, to be sure!  It is a great thing to know the worst before one goes out, so that even the terrors of the arc lights before our theaters will be powerless to dismay us.

If there is room in the dressing-room, there should be a sofa with a slip cover of some washable fabric that can be taken off when necessary.  This sofa may be the simplest wooden frame, with a soft pad, or it may be a chaise-longue of elegant lines.  The chaise-longue is suitable for bedroom or dressing-room, but it is an especially luxurious lounging-place when you are having your hair done.