Rug styles

That essential ingredient is style, or perhaps you may call it taste. In the changing parade of furnishing fashions, certain things have style; many have not. But there never was an era in which the discriminating person could not find some pieces of furniture, some floorcoverings and fabrics that were right in color, form, scale and texture.

If you are the kind of person who likes and can afford frequent changes, by all means do your house in the current fashion and do it over when it begins to look dated.

If your major investments have to last for many years, play safe. Choose authentic furnishings in any of the good historic periods and buy the best you can afford.

They may not always be in the height of fashion, but they will never look queer or dated, and they will "shabby" gracefully.