History of Interior Design: From The First Chair to The Contemporary Home

Discover how thousand years of evolution–and great creative geniuses–helped shape our homes

Interior design was born together with the very idea of humanity. Organizing the spaces we inhabit and work in, giving them security and practicality, is a basic need.

Throughout history, interior design has always reflected changes in our lifestyle. In the Middle Ages, for example, when lords and vassals lived practically together, in the same spaces, furniture was scarcer and shared. The Renaissance brought the idea of privacy, giving rise to an endless number of innovations that brought us comfort and beauty.

But this story starts much earlier. Although it has not always been documented and valued enough.

Chairs, etc.

Invented in Egypt around 5,000 years ago, chairs were initially very low and not as widely used, since people sat with their legs crossed and often on the floor.

Over the centuries, they evolved, gaining new designs and purposes. An adaptation of the chairs, the triclinium, a piece of furniture much appreciated by the upper Roman classes, allowed them to do what they liked best: eat, drink and chat at endless banquets while keeping an almost horizontal position.

Throughout the Middle Ages, chairs spread out for good, keeping people off the ground, a focus of disease in a society without contemporary concepts of hygiene or even privacy: lords and vassals lived confined to the same spaces, and the poorer classes inhabited areas close to the market and in the midst of an intense collective life.

From the Renaissance onwards, chairs reached an unprecedented level of beauty and sophistication. They adopted luxurious silk upholstery and high backrests to accommodate the increasingly large and elaborate dresses worn by the ladies of the flourishing bourgeoisie.

Privacy: when interior design underwent a radical transformation

In the Renaissance house, each person had their own intimate space. This change led to new developments such as dressing tables with mirrors (15th century), wallpaper (17th century), upholstered sofas with turned legs (17th century), iron-plate stoves (18th century), and central heating (18th century).

Craftsmen dedicated to creating furniture and decorative objects enjoyed growing fame as they created beautiful and more affordable solutions.

Adam, Hepplewhite, Chippendale, Sheraton, and many other furniture masters became synonymous with their creations, lending their names to pieces that have survived to the present day.

Interior design becomes a creative discipline

If the basis for understanding the origins of interior design in ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptian one, are only the drawings and hieroglyphs on the walls of the tombs, the same cannot be said of the explosion that has occurred since the Art Nouveau.

This very well documented 19th-century artistic style provided an explosion of creation that gave interior design another status.

Now integrated into architecture, this creative discipline came to be recognized for the first time as such.

Driven by steel, glass, and other materials that were continuously rolling off the production lines of the Industrial Revolution, this movement produced great artists such as Louis Majorelle and Hector Guimard (France), Victor Horta (Belgium), Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Scotland), and Antoni Gaudí (Spain).

For them, the future had arrived, and it was full of curves, feminine figures, and Eastern and tropical elements.

Modernism, Bauhaus, and De Stijl

Meanwhile, in countries like Germany and the United States, concrete provided a revolution in the way of building –which impacted the design of interiors. The simple and powerful shapes of skyscrapers inspired a new furniture, practical and with no unnecessary luxuries. Designers such as Frank Lloyd Wright in the United States and Le Corbusier in France have influenced generations of architects and designers.

In Germany and the Netherlands, two movements inspired by the ideas of modernism would revolutionize these disciplines.

The Dutch De Stijl movement (1917) and the German Bauhaus school (1919) formed the basis of what could be called a middle-class style.

An aesthetic seen in the rational lines of pieces like the classic Wassilly chair (Marcel Breuer) and Barcelona chair (Miles Van der Rohe), true design icons.

The Nordic revolution

Farther north, something was happening that would change the course of interior design again. Inspired by the ancestral homes of Scandinavia, the so-called Nordic style became synonymous with discreet sophistication, with simple elements such as light wood, neutral colors, conical angled legs, and straight lines.

Danish designer Arne Jacobsen synthesized this style’s sense of elegance in his Egg chair, which was spread across the world by global brands such as the Swedish IKEA.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, as the world faced strong economic growth and globalization,
houses became increasingly similar.

With regional differences in terms of materials, shapes, and especially price, the same furniture and design elements were duplicated in living rooms, bedrooms, offices, and public spaces from Africa to the Far East, from Latin America to Australia.

The way we organize our environments brings us closer and creates a sense of belonging. However, interior design
doesn’t conform to standards or limitations.

It is based on a simple and immutable logic proposed by designer William Morris in the 19th century: that few things bring us greater well-being than living in a nice house.

You may also like:

- 10 Essential Online Interior Design Courses for Beginners
- What is Interior Design? (All You Need to Know)
- What Exactly is Hygge in Nordic Design?
- Decorative Furniture Painting, a course by Lucas Rise
- Design and Conceptualization of a Chair, a course by Christian Vivanco