In selecting bedroom draperies, two “don’ts” must be strictly observed:  don’t use flowered drapery with a flowered wall, and don’t buy heavy, unwashable hangings of woolen, damask, satin, or brocade, which not only are out of harmony with the whole idea of bedroom simplicity, but shut out air and sunlight, make the room seem stuffy, and collect and hold dust and odors.  The patterns of chintzes, cretonnes, and silkolenes are manufactured to follow closely the paper designs, and where flowered ceiling and frieze are used with a plain wall, the same color and design may be carried out in bed and window draperies, and in couch and chair coverings.  With a flowered or much-figured wall snowy curtains of Swiss, muslin, or net, with ruffles of lace or of the same material, are prettier than anything else; and for that matter, they are appropriate with any style of decoration and can always be kept fresh and dainty.  But elaborate lace curtains which have seen better days elsewhere are most emphatically not for bedrooms, and should find another asylum.  A pretty window drapery is the thin white curtain with a colored figured inner curtain.  The use of figured draperies demands a good sense of proportion and of the eternal fitness of things, else it easily degenerates into abuse.

[Illustration:  The bedroom.]

BEDROOM FURNISHING

The bedroom furniture must be chosen rather with a view to fitness than to fashion.  “Sets” are no more.  How stereotyped and assertive they were, and undecorative!  Bed, dresser, and washstand, forcibly recalling to one the big bear, middle-sized bear, and little bear of nursery lore, were clumsy and heavy and bad, even in hardwood; but when they were simply stained imitations of the real thing, and ornate with wooden knobs, machine carving, and ungraceful lines, they were truly unspeakable.  The bed with its fat bolster, on top of which, like Ossa on Pelion piled, stood the pillows, perhaps covered with shams which bade one “Good night” and “Good morning” in red cotton embroidery—­was especially hideous as contrasted with our present-day enameled or brass bed, and belongs to the dark ages of crocheted “tidies,” plush-covered photograph albums, “whatnots,” prickly, slippery haircloth furniture, and other household idols which bring thoughts that lie too deep for tears.  Only two styles of sets find a welcome in the up-to-date home—­the rich, dark, mellow mahogany, which is too costly for the average pocketbook, and the white enameled.  Even so the component parts differ from those of a few years back; then the dresser was considered an absolute essential; now we frequently prefer the more graceful dressing table, with its small drawer or two for the unornamental toilet accessories, or the compromise between the two—­the princess dresser—­with the roomy chest of drawers or chiffonier.  The all-white furniture gives the room an air of chaste purity and is no more expensive than a set in any other good wood, but must be well enameled or it will be impossible to keep it clean.