Just as we choose our grade of floor-covering from ingrain to Aubusson, we must choose the grade of other furnishings.

Even an inexperienced buyer would be apt to feel this, and would know that if she found a simple ingrain-filling appropriate to a bed-chamber, maple or enamelled furniture would belong to it, instead of more costly inlaid or carved pieces.
It may be well to reiterate the fact that the predominant use of each room in a house gives the clew to the best rules of treatment in decoration and furniture.

For instance, the hall, being an intermediate space between in and out of doors, should be coloured and furnished in direct reference to this, and to its common use as a thoroughfare by all members of the family.

It is not a place of prolonged occupation, and may therefore properly be without the luxury and ease of lounges and lounging-chairs.

But as long as it serves both as entrance-room to the house and for carrying the stairways to the upper floors, it should be treated in such a way as to lead up to and prepare the mind for whatever of inner luxury there may be in the house.