Sofas are always expensive.  That is one reason for advising that beds be treated like “day-beds.”

Wall papers, at ten cents a roll, come in charming colours and designs, and with a few cheap French coloured prints, framed in passepartout, your room is attractive at once.

If your prints are black and white use broad passepartout in same colour as the wall paper, only a tone deeper.  If you use favourite photographs, suppress all margins and frame with narrow black passepartout.

For curtains use one of the sixty-or seventy-cent chintzes which come in attractive designs and colours, or what is still cheaper, sun-proof material, fifty inches wide (from $1.10 to $1.50 a yard), and split it in half for curtains, edging them with a narrow fringe of a contrasting colour which appears in the chintz of chair-pads.  Another variety of cheap curtains is heavy cream scrim with straps (for looping back) and valance of chintz.  These come cheaper than all chintz curtains and are very effective, suggesting the now popular and expensive combination of plain toned taffetas combined with chintz.

Use for sash curtains plain scrim or marquesette.

Let your lamps be made of inexpensive one-toned pottery vases, choosing for these still another colour which appears in the chintz.  The lamp shades can be made of a pretty near-silk, in a plain colour, with a fringe made up of one, two or three of the colours in the chintz.

If you happen to have your heart set on deep rose walls and your bedroom furniture is mahogany, find a chintz with rose and French blue, and then cover your arm-chair pads and bed with chintz, but make your curtains of blue sun-proof material, having a narrow fringe of rose, and use a deep rose carpet, or rugs, or if preferred, a dull brown carpet to harmonise with the furniture.  A plain red Wilton carpet will dye an artistic deep mulberry brown.  They are often bought in the red and dyed to get this shade of brown.

For attractive cheap dining-room furniture, buy simple shapes, unfinished, and have the table, sideboard and chairs painted dark or light, as you prefer.

In your dining-room and halls, if the house is old and floors bad, and economy necessary, use a solid dark linoleum, either deep blue or red, and have it waxed, as an economical measure as well as to improve its appearance.

In a small home, where no great formality is observed, well chosen doilies may be used on all occasions, instead of table cloths.  By this expedient you suppress one large item on the laundry bill, the care of the doilies in such cases falling to the waitress.

To make comfortable, convenient and therefore livable, a part of a house, formerly an attic, or an extension with small rooms and low ceilings, seems to be the special province of a certain type of mind, which works best when there is a tax on the imagination.

When reclaiming attic rooms, one of the problems is how to get wall space, especially if there are dormer windows and very slanting ceilings.  One way, is to place a dressing table in the dormer, under windows, covering the sides of the dormer recess with mirror glass, edged with narrow moulding.  The dressing-table is not stationary, therefore it can be easily moved by a maid, when the rooms are cleaned.