ALL-WHITE DECOR: COLOR IT GLAMOROUS, SERENE.

Byline: Madeleine McDermott Hamm Houston Chronicle

To feel cool on those steamy, languid summer days ahead, it helps to look cool.

In pre-air-conditioning days, we switched to summer white clothes and put away the area rugs to leave floors bare. Lacy white curtains fluttered at open windows, and washable slipcovers in white or pale shades covered the upholstery.

Remember the scene in ``The Great Gatsby'' with the group lounging around on a hot day in white dresses and white suits in a white room, desperately trying to keep cool? Those white-on-white rooms look so serene, so cool on the covers of stylish home magazines, but do real people live that way today?

``People love white. And it sells,'' says New York designer Larry Laslo, who mixed 10 shades of white in a glamorous setting of his new furniture for Directional at the spring International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C. ``There are so many shades to work with: gray whites, yellow whites, linen whites, creams. I go for shapes and textures and prefer solids to patterns.

Interior designer Richard Holley believes nothing is more luxurious than a white setting but cautions that it will require facing the maintenance problems. ``One way to deal with this is to do white slipcovers that can be cleaned. Then you don't have to get neurotic over it,'' he says.

Holley says he's had a white sofa for years, and it hasn't been re-covered. ``A couple of times I had a cleaning specialist come in ...

but for spots I keep a can of Goddard's Dry Clean Spot Remover handy.''

For an upscale showcase house last year, Holley did a handsome all-white master bedroom punctuated with a black-lacquer screen for drama. ``It's almost as if white doesn't become as dramatic without a black or deep-color accent,'' he says. ``And mixing many different shades of white and different textures is much more interesting than repeating one shade.''

Interior designer, professor and author John F. Pile says whites and near-whites suggest clarity, openness and brightness. However, Pile writes in the second edition of his authoritative book ``Interior Design'' (Abrams, $55), ``All-white schemes can seem forced and empty, but whites used with appropriate accents imply modernity and high style.''

Interior designer Barbara Schlattman finds an all-white room a little extreme. ``But it can work if you add some wonderful color accent, like Mediterranean blue. And it is easy to change the mood by changing the accent colors used with white.''

Designer David D. Stone puts an exclamation point on the subject of white rooms with this observation: ``White-on-white rooms are most successful when they're done for colorful people.''