Great results can be accomplished by a decorative regeneration of old houses without any structural changes at all.

A house which is put to hard and conscientious family service should be thoroughly renovated at least once every ten years. This does not mean casting out all the old things and introducing new, but a freshening of the old and bringing up to date. People who have lived for many years in the same place and amid the same surroundings often do not realize what a dingy and somber cloak time casts upon material objects, and how this unconsciously affects the spirits of the family and especially of the younger members, who are continually contrasting it with the outer world.

Ten years are usually required for a revolution in the cycle of taste in decoration, so at the end of that length of time one is sure to meet with new and invigorating influences.

When the renovation of to-day is undertaken, all the walls should be scraped of their floral and tapestry paper. The downstairs rooms should have either gray-painted walls, paneled with simple wood moldings painted the same color, or with lines of a contrasting shade; or rough paper of some medium positive tone. Red, royal blue, and brown should be tabooed - they belong to the taste of a past age. Dull yellow, light red orange, cadet or sea blue, mauve, apple or spring leaf green afford backgrounds more in keeping with the modern spirit. If the choice of colors for the adjoining rooms is regulated by the deductions of the Taylor Color Chart, harmony will be insured.

Except in very large rooms natural oak and mahogany woodwork should be painted either the color of the walls (which is best when the furniture is large and the room small) or a uniform cream or gray throughout the house. This applies to wood-paneled dining-rooms and libraries. Very few generally good decorative effects can be obtained with a dark wood background in a small room. Paint will not injure your hard wood. In fact, it helps preserve it. Its natural finish can be restored again if desired at any time by paint remover, sand paper, elbow grease, and varnish.

Ceilings should be tinted a lighter shade of the walls, and the floors, if too far gone to be shellacked, can be painted or stained. If the ceilings are very high they can be brought down by bringing the ceiling tint to about two feet below the ceiling line and finishing with a narrow dark molding. A wainscoting of grass cloth or darker paper paneled with wooden strips and reaching about five feet is also a very good method.

If you do not wish to invest in new lighting fixtures, paint those you have the color of the room and make new silk or parchment shades.

Have your old carpets and rugs dyed a deep shade of the wall or of the predominant color which is to be used in the decoration of the room, or woven over into Fluff Rugs in pleasant shadings.

These Fluff Rugs are, indeed, a remarkable re-discovery and provide excellent modern floor coverings from worn-out carpets. It is an old hand-weaving process which our grandmothers used, but perfected by modern machinery which makes a thick, even texture possible. Two dominant colors of the old carpet, provided they are good and harmonious, can be woven together and a third and fourth used in the border. This gives a neutralized mixture of colors but it usually takes its place well on the floor. The materials, however, can be dyed before or after weaving and any desirable combinations of colors procured.

An interesting incident is related in connection with some old carpet sent down to a New York concern to be woven into Fluff Rugs from an old church in New Hampshire. Instead of replacing the old carpet with new, or attempting to use the Fluff Rugs, the Ladies' Auxiliary auctioned the made-over rugs off at a fair and obtained almost enough money to re-decorate the church.

Either remove your pictures from their tarnished gilt frames and fit them into panels over the mantels and in the walls, or refinish your gold frames by applying shellac and powder them with dust strained through a cheesecloth bag. The dull gold then may be touched up with colors dominant in the picture. Successful frames have been made by removing the outer frame entirely and hanging the picture framed in the narrow slip which comes next to the glass. Un-framed canvases often afford very interesting decorations for walls which provide a good background color, but a few go a long way. Try to influence your selection of pictures which are to be re-hung by artistic judgment instead of sentiment.

When you have worked down to the furniture it will first be necessary to undertake a thorough elimination. This also applies to bric-a-brac! Try to select each piece of furniture with some definite place or function in view. It will be found that a second-hand dealer will usually give you enough money for some of the larger and more unwieldy pieces to have substitutes for them built in, and through this means space will be saved and the aspect of the room greatly improved. Plain shelves built in by a carpenter and stained or painted take their place much better against the wall than the huge pillared glass-doored bookcases of old. Window seats and fireside settles can be made to take the place of sofas which are expensive to re-upholster and usually difficult to fit into small rooms.

Pack away your old lace curtains and replace them with plain cream or gray scrim or casement cloth. Put up bright modern linen, chintz, or cretonne hangings.

Without a very large outlay, the whole face of the house will be changed, and gradually, by impressing upon the members of the family the desirability of house-gifts for family celebrations, bit by bit the enlivening touches may be acquired.

The most difficult of all old houses to regenerate is the narrow city house with its two long narrow rooms to a floor, dark hallways, and narrow flights of steps. One's spirit droops before the family-rooms at the top of the stairs are reached and it needs strong and positive decorative effects to revive it.

The regeneration which was accomplished in the living-rooms of one old house in Washington Square shows the willingness even of such rooms as these to respond to proper treatment.

The upstairs front room was long and narrow with a small alcove. The house had been a very fine one in its day and possessed beautiful oak trim with hand-carved corner insets. Its mantel was of real marble and fortunately of an unostentatious character. Can you picture this room in its mid-Victorian garb before the regeneration? The mantel was draped in a Persian scarf, the walls covered with a great patterned paper and replete with oil reproductions in massive gilded frames. The floor rejoiced in an elaborate Wilton carpet and the heavily stuffed furniture was upholstered in faded plush. The windows were festooned in brocade, edged with tassels, completely concealing their fine wood trim.

In the regeneration floor, walls, woodwork, and ceiling were painted a pure gray - the floor several shades darker. Plain scrim curtains were hung at the windows with hangings of thin orange silk inside the trim. Side brackets with electric lights were substituted for the old fixtures and the shades for these were made of plain shirred gray silk lined with orange. There were no chairs in the room, the Bohemian dwellers preferring to use the floor and couches. One couch placed against the windows had a cover of blue and gold woven silk and plain pillows of blue, orange, and rose violet. Beside it was placed a low table with a samovar and smoking outfit, and on the floor a low stand for newspapers and magazines and a huge copper flower bowl. On either side were tall copper candlesticks with long wax candles, one resting on a tab-ourette and the other on the floor. At the opposite side of the room was another broad couch with an orange cover and blue pillows. The alcove was, of course, treated the same as the main room and its furnishings consisted of a couch with a blue and gold cover and a single dull rose violet pillow. Above it an unframed decorative painting was hung and in the window stood a small table with a rose antique glass decanter which was a charming touch repeating, as it did, the tone of the pillow on the couch. The center of the room was absolutely clear and the gray painted floor was bare except for three small rugs in front of the couches.