Of first importance, of course, are light and air; these we must have, and sun if possible. One good warm ray of sunshine is a more effective destroyer of disease and "dumps" than all the drugs on the market; while good ventilation is one of the most valuable as well as one of the cheapest and most ignored assets of the home, particularly of the bedroom, where our hereditary enemy, the microbe, loves especially to linger. Given air and light, we have the best possible start toward our rest room and upon its exposure and size depends largely what we shall add unto it in the way of furnishings and decorations. Dark walls and floors wrap one in gloom and have no place in any bedroom. A warm, sunny exposure invites the use of contrastingly cool light blues, grays, greens, and creams; while the glow of delicate pinks and yellows helps to make a sunshine in the shadows of a north light. East and west lights adapt themselves to the tasteful use of almost any color, saving and excepting red, which cannot be mentioned in the same breath with rest and has the red-rag-to-the-bull effect on nerves. If an overstrong affection for it demands its use, it must be indulged in sparingly and much scattered and tempered with white. Though a certain sympathetic warmth should be expressed in the bedroom coloring, we want rather to feel than to see it, and too much becomes a weariness. CARPETS VERSUS RUGS Beginning with the base, as becomes a good builder, and working upward, floor coverings which cover without covering, if one may indulge in an Irishism, are far preferable to those which extend from wall to wall. Carpets undoubtedly have their uses: they make over well into rugs, supply heat to the feet, particularly in summer, and to the disposition during the semiannual house cleaning. They also cover a multitude of moths. But they belong to the dark ages of unenlightened womanhood whose chief end was to keep house, and have been jostled into the background by bare floors or mattings, with rugs. Hardwood floors certainly are nice and seem to wear an air of conscious pride of birth, but their humbler self-made brethren of common pine, stained and varnished or oiled, answer the purpose fully as well. It really amounts to a case of rugs make the floor, for if they are pretty and conveniently disposed about it, the floor itself receives very little attention. Small rugs before bed, dresser, and chiffonier will suffice in a small room, and can be easily taken out and cleaned, but a more commodious room requires the dressed look imparted by the larger rug. Whatever its size, avoid large figures and strong colors, choosing rather a small, somewhat indistinct pattern woven in the deeper shades of the other decorations of the room, at the same time supplying a foundation which, without calling attention to itself, becomes a good support for the general decorative plan--a base strong but neither heavy nor striking.