Living-rooms
A few words may be said as to living-rooms. Most living-rooms in better-class houses are too high. This is probably due to the bad example of London. In London the height of a house is the only dimension in which there is, so to say, the least elasticity, and London architects have attempted to compensate by height for absolutely inadequate area.
The rooms of some of the learned societies at Burlington House, with a space of several feet between the top of the window and the ceiling, afford excellent illustrations of the point which is to be avoided. Windows should extend to within a few inches of the ceiling, and should open at the top. This is universally admitted. If the room be 12 feet or 13 feet high, and the windows go to the top, then the window becomes unmanageable from its weight, and the opening of the top, although theoretically possible, is seldom put in practice. The wholesomeness of a room depends very much upon the rapidity with which the air in it can be renewed—the facility, in short, with which one can give it a blow out. This depends upon the relation of window area to cubic capacity. Windows, again, should be so constructed that they can be easily manipulated by a child. The louvre window ventilator, such as is common in churches, will be found very valuable for the admission of a constant but relatively small supply of air. These ventilators were introduced by the late Professor John Marshall into his wards at University College Hospital, and with the very best results.
Relatively low rooms, with big mullioned windows going to within a few inches of the ceiling, are far more wholesome than lofty rooms in which the tops of the walls are inaccessible to the housemaid, and the window sashes too weighty for her to move without difficulty.
For wholesomeness and comfort I believe a height of 10 feet is sufficient for any domestic living-room, and 9 feet for a bedroom. Provided the windows go to the top, and can be easily opened, it is very doubtful if there is any object, from the purely sanitary point of view, in having rooms more than 9 feet high. In rooms of such a height the cornice of the ceiling can be easily reached by a housemaid standing on a set of hand-steps, and the practical advantage of this is very great.
Our health is more in the hands of the housemaid than most of us are aware. Facility for cleaning should be ever in the mind of both builder and furnisher. The modern boudoir, hung with dabs of mediæval rags, and stuffed with furniture and nicknacks till it looks like a transplanted bit of Wardour Street, is often not very cleanly; and when the daylight is excluded to a maximum extent, lest fading should take place, and the sun's rays never have a chance of disinfecting the dust upon and behind the curios, it cannot be wholesome.
It may be remarked that some of the curtain hangings and chintzes which are now, or were lately, in vogue are dressed or printed with a material which gives them a peculiar 'fusty' smell, something like inferior hay. No room in which they are used can ever smell 'fresh,' and it must be remembered that the smell of 'freshness' due to the free admission of light and air is the best practical criterion of wholesomeness.