The placing of the piano presents itself as an embarrassing problem in apartment decoration. Of course, if one is preeminently musical, the logical procedure is to convert the living-room into a music room. A shiny ebony grand piano is not an ugly object in itself, but amid a heterogeneous collection of unrelated objects, it looms up gigantically. A very successful music room was created out of an ordinary apartment living-room by building up the decorative scheme around the piano itself and subordinating everything else to the single function of the room. A color scheme of white, black, and gold was employed.

The walls were white with long narrow panels into which strips of oriental embroidery on a black ground was inserted. The floor was black with white fur rugs. The furniture was of black ebony and the upholstery and hangings were in black and gold. The large grand piano melted into the black of the panels, the black of the floor, and the room formed a striking and uniform whole.

If there is an alcove in the living-room it disposes of the problem of the grand piano, but the regulation upright piano which no family seems to think it can do without, although it often is not touched except to strum upon, is an equally weighty problem. It is far from a thing of beauty, and although it does not occupy so much room as the larger species, it seldom takes its place well amid other furnishings. It may seem a tax upon the already very much over worked screen to suggest that it may be used as a means of concealing an upright piano when it forms a discordant note in a room, but this has proved the only solution in a number of cases. Mr. Bertram Goodhue, the architect, who, although his apartment was of a large and luxurious type, could find no propitious place for a piano, had a special case built which, when it was closed, looked like a carved cabinet. It might be a good idea for piano makers to adopt his idea. Pianos finished to match the woodwork incased in plain square cabinets can often be fitted into inconspicuous places. Pianos finished in white take their place well against white wainscoting.

An ingenious concealment of that ugly and disfiguring feature, the radiator, often lends much to the unified conception of the room. The simplest way is to throw a piece of fabric 6ver it and set a jar or vase upon it. Another way is to box it over and use a fitted cover of fabric or, if it is a high one, it can be incased in a cupboard with painted wire screening and inside curtains to match the hangings. Sometimes a bookcase or bona fide cupboard is built around this illu-sionary one. When it comes in front of a window it can often be concealed in a built in window seat or used to form the back of a high bench with a low built in seat. Boxed in radiation, of course, brings about a loss of heat, but apartment houses are usually sufficiently heated so that the decrease will not be a hardship.

For the small dark court bedrooms, light backgrounds and space saving devices must be resorted to. They need to be made as compact as a ship's cabin.

If the room is intended only for one person, the problem is not difficult. The bed should be selected with the size of the room in mind. A low posted or couch bed can usually be fitted into the corner and dressed during the daytime in a fitted cretonne cover and pillows. If the room is for a man, an iron bedstead painted green with the framework, just high enough to keep in the bedclothes, and a cretonne cover in a conventionalized bird pattern on a tan or green ground, converts the bed into a sightly and convenient day couch. With this, light yellow walls and woodwork, a chest of drawers painted green with a small unframed mirror hung above it, one comfortable chair upholstered in cretonne and two smaller green painted chairs with rush bottoms, a small green table with a good reading light, and a tan rug makes a very possible bedroom out of one of seemingly impossible dimensions. An oak or mahogany chest of drawers and table can be used in place of painted ones, but they will not usually take their place as well.

If the room is to be used for a feminine member of the family or for a feminine guest, painted peasant furniture with stiff little garlands of flowers on an ivory or light green ground, against the yellow background will be found charming. Instead of the table, one of the new dressing tables with the mirror on a hinged cover which folds back and forms a flat topped desk, will add a note of interest and comfort. If the decorated furniture is used, the pattern should not be repeated in the hangings and bed cover. Plain yellow, rose, or light green sunfast material, or light silk furnishes a better contrast, and there should be a plain medium green, rose, or buff rug. One does not usually resort to hand decoration for a court bedroom, but any one clever with the brush can copy the stiff floral pattern of the furniture on a narrow frieze, or as the center decoration for self-toned panels.

The only way to make anything like a room out of the small bedroom which has to serve for sleeping and dressing quarters for two people is to employ some modern type of folding bed. The best type is known as the Throop bed. It is a large double bed with a box spring which folds back lengthwise into an inoffensive cabinet arrangement. Between the slender inconspicuous supports curtains to match the hangings can be hung, fastened top and bottom with small rods. It is ventilated through the curtains all day. The framework is entirely of metal and no more comfortable bed exists. The woodwork of this bed can be procured to match your furniture - which should of course be of slender type - and with bright colored cretonne curtains is good to look at. When folded up, sufficient room can be provided for dressing in comfort.

In the more modern type of apartment the long hall is usually replaced by a square foyer which leads directly into the living-room and dining-room, while the bedrooms are situated on a shorter hall to the rear. This provides a much more inviting entrance and affords the opportunity of vistas and a greater feeling of spaciousness, although the rooms are often not so large. Practically all the principles which apply to the older type apply to these apartments, also, except that the wide openings between the foyer, dining-room, living-room, and possibly library, necessitates an even closer relation in their decorative treatment. The backgrounds should be of the same value, if not of the same color. All sense of coordination and consequently spaciousness and poise is lost when the walls do not present a unified vista and when one catches a glimpse of one corner of the dining-room walls in dark brown tapestry, with dark oak woodwork, a corner of the living-room with light gray paneling and mahogany, and of the library in green grass cloth and walnut. If the keynote of the decorative scheme is supplied by the gray paneling of the living-room, the adjoining rooms should also be light and the woodwork should be of the same in all. These rooms will always be seen together and they should be planned as one, or at least with a view to supplementing one another.

The adoption of a unified wall treatment for the entire apartment, especially when it is small and compact, is usually the most satisfactory plan. Plain gray walls throughout the whole apartment can be varied with contrasting hangings and furniture so that any tendency toward monotony is destroyed, and a pleasant unity and wholeness established.

In the larger and more luxuriant apartments, where two or three ample sized living-rooms are provided, it is possible to adjust the living quarters so that they will more closely fulfil the family needs. When there are all grown ups in the family, especially debutante daughters, one may require the largest room for entertaining, and it may be made to take on the character of drawing-room, with a small adjoining morning-room for the daily use of the family. This morning-room is an established English custom and often is the most attractive room in the house. It should be furnished in a fresh and simple style with comfortable chairs, a few small bookcases, and one or two writing tables. It affords a convenient place to entertain informal daytime callers and usually serves all the daytime needs of the family.

Sometimes the largest room will be required for the library, and a small adjoining room can be made to serve as boudoir or study. In this case it should also be furnished in a light and simple manner for daytime use and should contain a day-bed, a writing table, a book case, and comfortable chairs.

An all-year-round country home was created out of an apartment on Riverside Drive in New York city, by furnishing its two large living-rooms, whose windows afforded a view many miles up and down the river, very much in the manner of an inclosed porch. Furniture of a closely woven, mustard brown wicker was used, with mustard, green, and black cretonne upholstery. The walls were dull yellow and the hangings and rugs green. On either side of the Caen stone mantel in the center of one wall were two yellow lattice work screens over which were trained the trailing vines of ivy plants placed on a ledge above. In spite of all assurances to the contrary the ivy grew and flourished in the steam-heated apartment.

This departure from the stereotyped living-room furniture was exceedingly refreshing and, even when put to formal uses, formed a charming background for the evening attire of guests. Never did the lights of the river appear so mystical and fascinating as when seen from those broad plate glass windows, many floors above the city street, where one lounged in comfortable chairs, placed to afford an unobstructed view, and talked, or became lost in silent wonder as the spirit moved. Day after day the river, garbed in its summer green or winter snow and ice, presented an ever changing panorama which, in its simple and appropriate setting, delighted the eye more than the most costly picture or the rarest tapestry or rug.

One could not very well say that such an apartment was a discouraging substitute for a home. Few homes could compete with the view, or offer surroundings more conducive to its enjoyment, yet of the thousands of apartments facing the river this was the only one, perhaps, in which sufficient courage or vision had been employed to utilize to its fullest extent this remarkable advantage.