" People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too. Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by colour, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect.

"Variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients are actual means of recovery."*

If colour and beautiful objects have this effect on the sick, how can we doubt but that a beautiful room, bright, or soothing from the effect of colour, will have a good and wholesome effect on those who are in health.

How much of ill-humour, depression, and craving for excitement may be caused by a dull, dark room, without a ray of beauty in the shape of colour or form to enlighten it.

Let your walls then be painted or papered with harmonious colours; or if, unluckily, you have no choice, and the dull, heavy, drab paper, or one of violent and vulgar colouring disfigures the room, try to enliven it or to tone it down, as required, by your curtains and furniture, or by bright water-colour drawings for the first, or engravings with dark or oak frames for the other. Though, really, a pretty paper may be had cheaply enough, and the expense is as nothing compared with the benefit conferred by it. But of some delicate attractive tints it is necessary to beware. The apple-green papers are coloured by means of arsenic, which is likely to fly off into the air of the room and slowly poison its inmates. The writer remembers that, as a child, she was always conscious of a feeling of discomfort and sleeplessness in a green bedroom; and that she was said to be fanciful and too imaginative, from the intense dislike she took in consequence of this feeling to green rooms. Science has since become popularized, and her childish distaste is proved to have had a very real and serious cause. A personal friend of hers will never again be quite strong from having slept for a long time in a bedroom papered with green.

A suspicion of the truth having been roused by our discussing the question of papers, the one covering her bedroom wall was tested, and the doctor declared her singular illness was actually slow arsenical poisoning from the particles which floated on the air from the paper. Another friend of ours - a gifted artist - once suffered from almost a fit, caused by the same thing. Fortunately he only passed one night in the fatal chamber, the paper of which was pulled down by order of his hostess the next day.

* Miss Nightingale's "Notes on Nursing".

With regard to health, Miss Nightingale says, "As for walls, the worst is the papered wall; the next worst is plaster. But the plaster can be redeemed by frequent lime-washing; the paper requires frequent renewing. A glazed paper gets rid of a good deal of the danger. But the ordinary bedroom paper is all that it ought not to be.

" The close connexion between ventilation and cleanliness is shown in this. An ordinary light paper will last clean much longer if there is an Arnott's ventilator in the chimney than it otherwise would.

"The best wall now extant is oil painted. From this you can wash the animal exuviag".

Bedroom papers should be light, they should not be of patterns which tempt the gazer on them to count them, I mean that alternate rows of bunches of flowers or fanciful shapes in very regular order, should be avoided. The sleeper awakened should not have rows of figures on the wall which tempt him to count six, seven, twelve, thirteen, as we are all conscious of having done. This is very disturbing, and as it is always possible that an invalid may occupy the bedroom, it is to be avoided.

Next as to warmth or coolness of colour.

Dark colours are wanner than light ones, because they absorb heat from the sun more than light ones do. This can be proved by experiment, and is indeed instinctively acknowledged by us all. Red is a warm colour. White gives coolness. We give the order of degrees in which the colours stand as regards heat.

1. Black - warmest of all.

2. Violet.

3. Indigo.

4. Blue.

5. Green.

6. Red.

7. Yellow.

8. White.

Now the rooms in our houses have, of course, different aspects, varying as to heat. A northern aspect never gets much sunlight, or all it does get is very early morning sunshine in the heat of summer. To live in rooms or a house which has only a northern aspect, or in which the chief rooms all look north is a mistake, as we have before said. Nevertheless, we may find in some corner of even a sunny house a north room to paper. Let us recollect that it will be nearly sunless, and provide a light-radiating paper for it. Red is warm. Light red would be bright and cheerful. White would be best as to light-giving, but then it looks cold ! Could we not choose a paper of the two mixed? The white ground with bright red figuring on it? In a north room the paper and furniture should be both brightly coloured. Blue is also pretty for a north room.

A warm south room will be the better for a white paper, or one of the grey green tint, which is not arsenical. Yellow is a restless colour in which the eye feels a want of repose. Yet amber - one of its shades - is very effective in a drawing-room facing north.

Let our readers remember that papers on walls retain a great deal of the dust which passes over them, and require dusting as much nearly as furniture does. They also retain infection; after scarlet fever or smallpox the walls of the sick chamber should be repapered, and the paint and whitewash of the ceiling re-done. Be careful also, that when your rooms are papered the old paper is first removed - this is essential to perfect purification of the apartment.

The paint in a house should harmonize with the paper and the furniture. With a pale grey-green paper, the doors and skirting boards should be painted pale green. With paper of a rosy hue, pale strawberry colour; or the finer maple-wood should be imitated in a drawing-room. Panels picked out in gold, and gilt mouldings, are great improvements, and where expense is no object, tinting the moulding of the ceiling is very desirable; soft shades, light and dark, of grey are very effective, and tints of colour blended with them are often beautiful.

Dining-rooms are better painted than papered. Fashion assigns them at present darker paper than the other rooms. In London, and for north rooms, this is a mistake, as it occasions a diminution of size to the eye, and a gloom and deficiency of light. If painted, a light colour would of course be employed, and this alone is an advantage; not to speak of the avoidance of fumes of dinner, which hang about a wall paper. We have two charming dining-rooms at this moment in our "mind's eye" - one painted pale green, with curtains of the same hue, but of a darker tint - the ceiling picked out in green grey and pale greens; another of a tint of indescribable salmon colour, with a crimson carpet, and curtains of a darker hue, yet retaining a due harmony of tint.*

How To Get Rid Of A Bad Smell In A Room Newly Painted

Place a vessel full of lighted charcoal in the middle of the room, and throw on it two or three handfuls of juniper berries, shut the windows, the chimney, and the door closely; twenty-four hours afterwards the room may be opened, when it will be found that the sickly unwholesome smell will be entirely gone. The smoke of the juniper berry possesses this advantage, that should anything be left in the room, such as tapestry, etc., none of it will be spoiled.

* For ordinary hired houses, paper alone is attainable, and a little judgment and knowledge of colour and its effects will help to render the dining-room pleasant and cheerful at a much lower rate of outlay.