Blue Plate Special: Letting a Collection Inspire a Color Scheme

Q: I've been given a collection of old plates by my aunt, who told me in no uncertain terms that they are "works of art and must be displayed prominently." They are beautiful, but I don't know where to put them. Our dining room is small and already full of things I love looking at. Are plates appropriate in a living room?

A: Well, yes ... a thing of beauty can be a joy wherever. Don't fall victim to thinking in cliches, such as:

Dinner plates can go only in a dining atmosphere. Consider mounting them over your living room mantel or sofa, or arranging a display right up front in the entry hall.

That said, however, let's go back to the dining room and see how a professional interior designer would handle your problem. Jackie Higgins, whose Beach Glass Interior Designs firm (beachglassinteriordesign.com) is known for revving up traditional styling, offers an elegant solution in the dining area we show here.

A collection of antique plates cued her approach, reports Higgins, who describes it as a "classic blue-and-white scheme bumped up a notch." The vivid blue on the chairs and in the damask curtain pattern adds "color punch" against the green walls. Damask itself couldn't be more traditional, but here, it's 'way oversized "to keep things current," as Higgins explains.

The plates become the stars of the room, bright notes of color all around the ceiling line that lift the eyes, as well as the overall spirit of the space. If her plates met a similar lovely fate, wouldn't your aunt be thrilled?

Q: Let's hear it for housework?

A: It's not going away, even for those of us who work 12-hour days somewhere else or employ legions of plug-in e-servants that vacuum, wash, monitor the lights and turn on the oven at the push of a long-distance button.

They may be huge helpers, but the buck for keeping a clean, efficient and healthy — ergo beautiful — house still stops here, with us humans. So every once in a while, Decor Score looks behind the scenes for new products and procedures that vow to keep the house shining and the housekeeper humming.

Old-fashioned steam is making news in the service of really clean floors. A new sweeper that's also a steam sanitizer works on hard surface floors like tile, resilients, and wood. One model (Haan's duo Steam Sweeper, haanusa.com) dry-sweeps, web-scrubs and promises to steam away 99.9 percent of hideous household germs like E.coli and salmonella.

Flushing money right down the drain? The bad news is that the family toilet is the biggest villain when it comes to wasting both water and money (daily flushings cost nearly 60 percent more water than the shower and 33 percent more than the laundry). The good news is that you can easily reduce water usage by as much as 70 percent, according to the inventor of a patented new drop-in device that coverts most single-flush home toilets into water-saving dual-flushers.

The fourth generation of a well-known plumber family in Chicago, Michael Schuster is something of a hydro-genius, who has spent nearly 20 years inventing plumbing valves and devices. His latest creation, HydroRight, is for D-I-Y installation and costs $25, considerably less than the average monthly water bill. (goMJSI.com)

Eau de Pet invading your home? Look into new scent-filtering vacuum bags and pour-in crystals designed to banish Fido's, ah, fragrances, and also filter out pet dander, mold spores, dust and other allergens (Pet Fresh from Arm & Hammer, armhammervac.com).

Rose Bennett Gilbert is the co-author of "Manhattan Style" and six other books on interior design.