By Helen Mathers

The Hall Gives the Keynote to the House, and Should be Arranged with Reference to the Rooms which Open out of it - Taste is a more Important Factor than Money - The Halls of Flats are more Difficult to Arrange demand only of a hall that it strikes a note of warmth, of welcome, to the incoming guest. It is really the keynote of the house, and the first impression it makes on you, good or bad, remains, no matter how charming (or the reverse) the rest of the house may be.

Many people arrange their entresol without reference to the rooms that open out of them, thus you will see a hot red hall and a piece of green just beyond, through an open door, or vice versa; you may even see two rooms beside or opposite with clashing wallpapers, and stair-carpeting chosen without relation to either.

If, when the front door is opened, you do not have an instant feeling of pleasure, something is wrong, or it is all wrong, and on studying the details that have gone to make up this disagreeable whole, you will realise how easily it might have been right.

It is the usual mistake - choosing colours haphazard without regard to one central idea, one dominant note, to which all others are subordinated. That comfort, combined with the restfulness which harmonious colours bestow, is the first consideration in a hall that is used constantly as a living-room, no one will deny. You want plenty of easy-chairs of the quietest pattern, some small tables, a carved chest, a tall oak dresser with some good blue on it, and a thick Turkey carpet or some Persian rugs look well, and everything, in short, that is good to use and look at, and in character.

A square hall, however, is by no means within the reach of everyone. There is, however, nothing expensive in the very simple but tasteful ingle-nook at the end like the accompanying illustration, devised by Mr. Harry Finn, of St. Albans.

The colouring is delightful - red tiled floor, briquette fireplace in various tones of rich deep green, cushions in keeping with last, woodwork, oak, dull, wax-polished; wall-paper warm cinnamon brown, curved ceiling of lower level than that of room, large cupboard bookcase behind figure, coloured leaded lights, catching the morning sun, and kerb and fireplace fittings, hammer-marked copper.

I have in memory another hall, of quite a different type, that I remember with pleasure, because on either side of the front door were small windows rather high up, that lit the hall beautifully, and did away with the usual groping effect. A cabinet or two, some high bronze jars, a rich Japanese screen, and some rugs sufficiently furnished it, and at some distance down was a white gate that swung open as you passed through, and that closed behind you.

I have always wondered why architects do not devote more attention to the lighting of halls - in this instance, no mistake had been made, and the result was delightful.

It is safe to lay down the axiom for a hall that you do for a room. Once get your walls, and carpet, and few hangings into harmonv, the furniture, so long as it is suitable for the purpose, may go anywhere you like. There is one point, however, to be insisted on, that coats and wraps are to be hung up somewhere out of sight; a cupboard must be contrived, and from a hall that is used as a living-room, even hats must be banished. A dog-grate, big enough to hold logs of wood, adds immensely to its cheeri-ness, so do sporting prints and foxs' heads, with such weapons as the men of the house have brought home from their travels, or the women glean.

An ingle-nook is a delightful addition to a hall which is occasionally used as a sitting-room. This photograph shows a fireplace in various tones of rich deep green

Some people hang oil-paintings in a hall, just as they will put exquisite'water-colours on a paper swearing loudly in all the primitive colours, and hang a Murillo beside a line engraving in a bed-room . While it is true that a large picture in oils above a vast open fireplace in a great house has the best possible effect, and the same holds good with dining- room and library, still, for the ordinary hall there is nothing to beat good etchings and good sporting prints . For the people who buy a picture because it is " pretty " - and it is the pretty-pretty in taste even mo re than the down-right hideous that reduces one to despair - and hang it up where the spirit moves them, in the hall or elsewhere, I do not write; it requires the training of a lifetime to buy the right pictures - pictures you can live with - and to learn where and how to hang them. Probably more houses are ruined by a miscellaneous collection of oils, water-colours, and prints than from any other reason - bare walls with the simplest paper, if all of one colour, are beautiful, austere, but before the ' splattered " expanse one sits weeping or anathematising, according to one's temperament, longing to haul them all down, to sort, to banish most - sometimes all.

For I must again, and yet again, assert that there is no ugly house, big or small, that could not by sorting, eliminating, adding to in places, and rearranging generally, be made comfortable and even delightful to live in.

In speaking of halls, one must not lose sight of the all-prevailing flats that have, alas, sounded the knell of families, for when you have to choose between a guest-chamber and a nursery, what becomes of the poor baby ? Roosevelt answers " Where ? " When the hall is of negligible proportions there is seldom more than room for a table, a hat and coat stand (that, like the lady whose figure had faults on both sides, achieves neither comfort nor ele-gance), a chair or two, and that is all. In this case the first thing to do is to decide on the colour of lobby and corridor. If you are well off for engrav-ings, black woodwork above and below, a blue-grey paper, and dark slate-blue linoleum or carpet and mats to match, will not at any rate show want of taste, or discount the blue, pink, or green rooms opening off, and that invariably (for in flat-life there is no privacy, and what would be indecent in a house is Nature in a flat) have their doors flung wide open.