Suggestions for color schemes which are in the real child spirit and are characteristic of various types of children may be found in the best foreign and American modern illustrated books for children. The work of Boutet de Monvel, Otto Baueriedl, Hans Pellar, Lisbeth Bergh, Walter Crane, Arthur Rackman, Leonard Brooke, Maxfield Parrish, and Jessie Wilcox Smith show wonderful feeling for child psychology, and sympathy with child nature.

It is well to avoid vague pattern or the conventional light and flimsy fabrics. There should always be a note of vitality in the child's surroundings and this is often well supplied by the use of staunch ginghams, bold figured muslins, bright colored Japanese crepes, or printed silks. The walls of the child's bedroom should be just as dignified in conception as the walls of the "grown-up's" bedrooms. A few excellent pictures which can be changed from time to time make the best decorations. The decoration should never be brought down to the child, but the child brought up to the decoration. There is nothing more tiresome to the average child of six or seven than a succession of inane nursery decorations, or furniture covered with monotonous painted objects.

Suitable furniture is more difficult to obtain. One has not nearly the variety to select from that is provided in nursery furniture. Some of the beds and chairs of children of long ago can often be used to give the room a quaint and individual character. If the wood is in good condition, it can be left in the original finish and used with walls of old blue or yellow and jaunty striped madras bedspreads and hangings. If the wood is not in good condition, it may be painted bright green, cobalt blue, or dull red-orange or yellow. Some very good sets have been made by carpenters and cabinet makers designed on the lines of the peasant furniture. This furniture should, of course, anticipate the growing needs of the child between the ages of six and twelve or thirteen. Juvenile furniture has a distinct function which cannot be supplied by either the nursery or adult type. If the expense of changing the furniture at the end of the nursery period, and again at the beginning of the adolescent, seems extravagant, it will be wiser to spend less on the luxurious details of the nursery and to employ the surplus later when it can give the child a conscious and inspirational pleasure. You cannot expect children to take pride and interest in their surroundings if you have not put thought and interest into them yourself, and the very fact that the furnishings have been made to fit him, makes the child feel a personal attachment to his room.

Whenever there is the least possibility of providing a separate playroom, it should be by all means utilized. Even the tiniest playroom which is equipped with facilities for the orderly and convenient storing of toys and which will allow for the construction of things with some semblance of permanency, will be found to have an important moral and educational value, besides saving a great amount of wear and tear on the nerves both of children and adults. It must first and last be remembered that a playroom is to use, and a playroom which cannot be used to the heart's content of the owners is a grave injustice to childhood.

The ideal location for the playroom is in the attic. Many a dingy old attic has been transformed with a little ingenuity into a veritable paradise for children.

The usual obstacles encountered are those of light, ventilation, and heat. Often it is possible to add a few large windows or a row of small ones without great expense or injury to the external appearance of the house. Sometimes a skylight is resorted to. If the chimney is so situated that the necessary heat can be supplied by an open fire, then the fireplace becomes an important point of both utilitarian and decorative interest.

The attic playroom allows for countless built in seats, cupboards, and bookcases. Its roof timbers, left in their rough state, can be used for the suspension of swings, rings, or trapeze for acrobatic feats, and its center area usually provides sufficient space for ball games and athletic contests. Here one can have a sand table without serious consequences to rugs and furniture, and can often keep cages and boxed collections of small animals and insects without terror to the rest of the family. Often there is a place where a stage can be erected for amateur theatricals and in that case there is usually ample room there, also, to. construct and paint the scenes. The attic was built for play and so favorable an environment does it present for the playroom, that there is need for little additional decoration than that provided by the playthings themselves and the child's imagination.

Many of the natural advantages of the attic playroom will have to be supplied artificially to playrooms located in more prosaic portions of the house. There should be no superfluous furniture, and that should bear some relation to the sizes of the children, and be as compact as possible.

The most practical playroom walls have a wainscoting three or three-and-a-half feet high and above it a substantial fabric should serve as wall-covering. The wainscoting saves the walls from hard usage and the fabric enables the pinning up of the child's own handiwork or collections, or the temporary use of bird charts and maps, or objects of seasonal or timely interest. A few good pictures should be hung and changed at intervals - and these are best selected by the child himself from the originals at the Art Museum, or from prints. If the fabric selected for the walls is burlap or canvas, it may be painted and kept scrupulously sanitary, although in these days of vacuum cleaners fabric wall coverings are easily scoured and kept free from dust. Sometimes the fabric is used in the place of the wooden wainscoting, and in this case it is usually five or six feet high. . Tall cupboards built into the corners afford good storing space and take up little room. A work cabinet with drawers and shelves for working materials -paints, paste, scissors, paper, pencils, and clay - is a great convenience and stimulative to serious effort on the part of the child. A nest of tables is a great saver of space as tables are essential for games and the occupations of children of various sizes. If there is a window seat, it is better to have the sides lift up on hinges instead of the top, or have cupboard doors, as it enables the toys to be kept neatly and renders them more accessible. One mother has devised a doll-house for her little girls, and car barns for her little boy, in two of the divisions of a cupboard window seat.