gs as this belong, of course, to
the efforts of the mural or decorative painter, who, in conjunction with
the decorator, or architect, has studied the subject as connected with
its surroundings.

CHAPTER XI

FLOORS AND FLOOR-COVERINGS

Although in ordinary sequence the colouring of floors comes after that
of walls, the fact that--in important houses--costly and elaborate
floors of mosaic or of inlaid wood form part of the architect's plan,
makes it necessary to consider the effect of inherent or natural colours
of such floors, in connection with applied colour-schemes in rooms.

Mosaic floors, being as a rule confined to halls in private houses, need
hardly be considered in this relation, and costly wood floors are almost
necessarily confined to the yellows of the natural woods. These yellows
range from pale buff to olive, and are not as a rule inharmonious with
any other tint, although they often lack sufficient strength or
intensity to hold their own with stronger tints of walls and furniture.

As it is one of the principles of colour in a house that the floor is
the foundation of the room, this weakness of colour in hard-wood floors
must be acknowledged as a disadvantage. The floors should certainly be
able to support the room in colour as well as in construction. It must
be the strongest tint in the room, and yet it must have the
unobtrusiveness of strength. This makes floor treatment a more difficult
problem, or one requiring more thought than is generally supposed, and
explains why light rooms are more successful with hard-wood floors than
medium or very dark ones.

There are many reasons, sanitary as well as economic, why hard-wood
floors should not be covered in ordinary dwelling-houses; and when the
pores of the wood are properly filled, and the surface kept well
polished, it is not only good as a fact, but as an effect, as it
reflects surrounding tints, and does much to make up for lack of
sympathetic or related colour. Yet it will be found that in almost every
case of successful colour-treatment in a room, something must be added
in the way of floor-covering to give it the sense of completeness and
satisfaction which is the result of a successful scheme of decoration.

The simplest way of doing this is to cover enough of the space with rugs
to attract the eye, and restore the balance lost by want of strength of
colour in the wood. Sometimes one or two small rugs will do this, and
these may be