One must always remember in planning the position of the lights for a room that the eye naturally seeks the brightest spot, and badly placed lamps and sidelights will upset the balance of a room.  The room must not be glaringly bright, but there should be a feeling of a certain evenness in the distribution of light.  A top light makes the light come from the wrong direction.  Artificial light in a room should take its general idea from the lighting of the room in the day time.  The daylight comes from the windows, the sides of the room, and the decoration of the room is built up with that in mind; so when we are planning the lighting scheme we should remember this and realize that the light should come from lamps placed advantageously on tables, and wall lights placed slightly above eye level.

Living-rooms should have a sufficient number of well placed sidelights to enhance the beauty of the room, and they should be placed near centers of importance such as each side of the fireplace, or wide door, or on each side of some important picture or mirror.  If there is a group of two or three windows which need to be more convincingly drawn together to form a unit, lights may be placed on each side of the group.  Sidelights can be placed in the center of panels, thus forming a decoration for the panel, and, flanking paintings or mirrors or tapestries, make beautiful and formal rooms, especially for the different periods of French, English, or Italian decoration.  This treatment with simpler forms of fixtures may also be used in our charming, but more or less nondescript, chintz living-rooms and country house drawing-rooms or dining-rooms.  With a sufficient number of lamps in the room the side-or wall-lights need not be lighted during the average stay-at-home evenings but are ready if there is some special occasion for brilliancy.  There are some rooms which are much improved by having no side-lights at all, all the light coming from lamps.  There should be plenty of floor sockets so placed that lamps may be used on tables near sofas and armchairs and on the writing table or large living-room table.  It is this proper placing of lamps which has so much to do with the charm and comfort of a room when evening comes.

In the average home there is no greater mistake in the matter of lighting than having a room lighted by chandelier or ceiling lights.  Lights at the top of the room, or a foot or two from the ceiling, break up completely the artistic balance of the room by drawing attention to them as the brightest spot.  They make the room seem smaller both by day and night, they cast ugly shadows, they do not give sufficient or correct light for reading or writing, and the glare above one’s head is nerve destroying.  When the sun is directly overhead we hasten to put up sunshades, so why should we deliberately reproduce in our homes the most trying position of light?  The fixtures also are usually extremely ugly.  One sees sometimes