Looking for an unusual accessory to accent a room? Borrow an idea from the Greeks and Romans and add a column or two. The columns can be real or simulated on wallpaper.

"The way we build today, columns usually don't have to carry a load," says Kitty Hawks, a decorator in New York. "They are purely for decorative purposes."

At the Kips Bay decorator showhouse in New York City this past spring, Hawks accented a quirky basement sitting room with two primitive-looking wood columns. The first column was in a niche at the entrance to the room. Its mate was at the opposite end of the room.

Hawks found the carved and painted wood columns, each a little over 6 feet tall, in a New York antiques store and used them purely for decoration.

Columns add interest to an entrance, can be used to divide space in a large open room, and are a way of having sculpture in your room fairly inexpensively, Hawks says.

David Madison used columns in a completely different way at the same showhouse. He placed six 4-foot-tall columns made out of birch wrapped with wisteria on a rooftop terrace. Each of these was topped with a topiary animal made out of wire, moss and ivy.

"Columns can add weight without mass," says Madison, a horticultural designer in New York. "I use columns indoors in small rooms to gain an elevated feeling without taking up needed floor space."

Madison says that when the column is tall it needs no crowning embellishment. If it is at eye level or below, you would want to put something - a bust, sculpture, plant or flower arrangement - on top of it. A column can easily become a light source by placing a canister light inside and covering the top with frosted glass.

Columns may be made of natural stone, wood, and synthetics such as fiberglass. Madison has wrapped wood with natural bark and fiberglass with live moss. Hawks usually finds old columns in antiques shops but notes they also can be built new.

Another approach to the column is with wallpaper. York Wallcoverings, in the second edition of its Minuet Collection, markets wallpaper with columns. Gramercy Wallcoverings has a wallpaper column that can be purchased by the yard as part of its Southern Breeze Collection.

In the Gramercy collection, "you get the capital and base for $39.99, and you buy the column part by the yard at $24.99 a yard," said Jeanne Byington, public relations representative for the company. "The idea is to hang the base just above the baseboard and the capital just below the ceiling."

Gramercy asked some interior decorators to think of ways to use the new column wallpaper.

Suzanne Levin Silverman, a decorator with Louis Mazor, Inc., in Baltimore, would use wallpaper columns to add interest to a long hallway by placing a column at either side of each doorway along the passage.

Judy Rigby of Coventry Cottage in Atlanta would create a romantic garden environment in a master bathroom by placing a wallpaper column on either side of a large tub. She would choose a tub with a wide ledge so that she could mass house plants on it. To enhance the romantic feeling, she would cover the rest of the wall with faux stone wallpaper.

Stanley Hura can imagine placing column wallpaper at each of four corners in a square room for an amusing trompe l'oeil effect that makes it appear that each column is holding up the ceiling.

Another idea from Hura is to place a wallpaper column on each panel of a tall panel screen. For a dramatic effect, he would place the screen in a corner of a room with plants in front of it.

Michelle Slovak, a decorator in New York, would stop the wallpaper column at table height and then hang a glass or marble shelf on the wall just above the column to create the visual effect that the wallpaper is holding up the table. She would use either one or two columns depending on the length of the top.

Margot Gunther would hang a wallpaper column on either side of a wide window and drape a sheer fabric over a rod for a romantic neoclassical effect.

Columns no longer have to hold up the roof, but they can still provide support for an interesting decorating scheme.