Color is more potent in creating the atmosphere of a house or room than is any other influence. Harmonious color will cover a multitude of sins in design, while no amount of good design will atone for discordant color.

Color produces a distinct reaction on the human system; it is cheering, depressing, irritating, or restful, as the case may be. It is, therefore, of primary importance to understand the right use of color in the home. Since the question of color is involved in the finish of walls and of woodwork, it is the first factor to be considered in the treatment of an interior.

Color has three generally recognizable characteristics: First, that quality that gives it its general or popular name and distinguishes it from other colors-as red from green, or yellow-reds from purple-reds, yellow-greens from blue-greens, and the like. This quality is named by the scientists, hue. Hues, or colors, may in general be classed as warm or cool. Yellow, orange, red, and colors strongly tinged with these, connected as they are with ideas of sun and fire and blood, are the warm colors. Blue, green, and violet, and colors strongly tinged with these, associated in thought with cold and distant things like ice, the sky, the woods, and purple hills, are the cool colors.

A second characteristic or quality of color is the strength or brilliancy, termed by the scientists, chroma or intensity. By this quality, a strong or bright color is distinguished from a soft, dulled, or grayed color, as the red in the upper from the red in the under side of an autumn leaf.

The third characteristic or quality is that which distinguishes light from dark colors, termed by the scientists, value. A popular term for light colors is tint; for dark colors, shade.