There is danger, perhaps, that this truth may be taken too seriously. It would also be a mistake to run to the other extreme and adopt at the outset a rigid plan of decoration and furnishing, specified like contract work to be carried out and completed on a certain date soon after the house is built. The problem is one of growing interest, especially as regards furniture, pictures, and the smaller objects of use or beauty, and for its best and happiest solution requires time and study. Only the broad and fundamental features can be settled in advance. The important thing is to have the main lines, dimensions, space relations, and colour schemes settled with due regard to utility and appropriateness and, as the work of construction proceeds, to keep all details in harmony with this general plan.
_Colour Harmony in the Model House._--It will be remembered that the colour scheme of the hall, living room, and dining-room of our model house was settled quite early in the development of the design. Standing near the centre of the living room and looking through the hall into the dining-room, one may see at a glance how some of the details of decoration were worked out in keeping with the general treatment. The walnut brown stain of the floors gives a good foundation of colour. It flows easily into the lighter browns and yellows of all the lower wall spaces. The suggestion of olive green in the frieze of the living room offers a pleasing contrast with the prevailing browns and harmonizes well with the woodwork of this room, which, it will be remembered, was designed to be finished in gum wood. This beautiful wood, when properly treated, presents a surface of satin-like texture and soft colour tone. In the dining-room a corner of which is shown in the frontispiece, the frieze lends a warmth of colour where it is needed and is in keeping with the fumed oak trim. The wide openings into the hall from the rooms on each side of it, together with the long, unbroken lines of the beamed ceilings, give the impression of generous width. The plain wall spaces, though varied in tone and relieved of monotonous spacings by the location of the necessary doors and windows, are of great assistance in increasing the apparent size of the room. Plain walls are also the best of backgrounds for pictures. _Redecorating Old Houses._--It is, of course, true that the decorating and furnishing of a house or an apartment cannot always have a new and original architectural design as the basis for the solution of the problems involved. As a matter of fact, in the great majority of cases, the houses in which homes are made are already built and have been previously occupied. Often they are very old houses, presenting difficult and even impossible tasks for the decorator. Sometimes, however, such houses are all the more desirable if they bear the marks of age that suggest a past of dignity and charm. But the spirit which inspires the artist in decorating and furnishing a house already built is the same as that which controls his thought when he can begin with the foundation of a new and original design. His first thought is to discover how beauty may be enhanced and at the same time unity of purpose and harmony of treatment be preserved. His constant care is to avoid incongruous elements, however beautiful they may be in themselves or however appropriate in other houses. His general aim is to use his art to develop the design as it is, if there be any design at all, and make the most of it.
