WALLPAPERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 231, 29 September 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

WALLPAPERS.

"THE HARMONIOUS HOME.*

(By G. EDITH BURTON.)

It is often said that a good or al pleasant view makes a tremendous difference to one's happiness in life, and. it certainly seems true. So then what about the wallpaper one has to live with day in day out? This, of course, in- rented houses, for in your own you would naturally spend much care and thought in choosing delightful colour schemes for each room. ' Even then disappointments will happen. That wonderful buff that looked so charming in the dull showroom, turns out to be altogether too light for the sunny room it was hung in; and th» pastel pink which was so sweet in the strip shown, looks rather too much like a frosted cake for a pink tea, once the whole room is done. Still, those are trifles compared to a room covered in a pattern of Virginian creeper of the shade of weak cocoa; or one of a sickly imitation of the willow plate romance; pagodas, and doves and all, in cobalt, and bright green. The writer actually saw this wicked thing, this travesty of the sweet willow pattern china, while house-hunting once. It .was an expensive paper, and the landlord exhibited it as the pride of his heart. "This paper," he Baid, "furnishes the room." He never spoke a truer word, it did. In that room pictures and furniture would be lost..

' At present I am battling with a buff paper with narrow stripes of the paper [people's favourite dingy chocolate, and tiny dreary pink flowers, of nc> known ppecies, meander up and down the stripes. For quite a time I managed not to count the stripes, by sheer strength of will; then one wet day, a little maid who had been awesomely quiet for some time, broke out with: "There are four stripes between one window, and five between the other; why is it like that?" And now my will is broken, and when I look up from my typewriter to rest my eyes, I count stripes. The paper is in perfect order, not a tear anywhere, nor a grease spot nor a strain, so there is no hope for a new one, till in desperation we do it ourselves. If I were a landlord- i would use nothing but plain papers. People would then have only one complaint, colour, not pattern. Or is there anything prettier than faint 6elf-stripes (too faint to count), with a delightful soft-coloured frieze? I once saw an all-over pattern which was really beautiful, and well it might

be, for it cost a guinea a roll, and had been specially ordered for the hall and stairway of a very fine home at the Lower Hutt, Wellington. It was the most effect of a garden- ablaze with mid-summer glory that you could ever imagine. Almost you expected to hear birds singing and birds humming. In a room it would have been hideous, and have screamed at the furniture; in the hall it was exquisite; it gave you a feeling of well-being, and glad expectancy.