Interior Design History

As a profession, interior design has a comparatively short history. Architects, artisans, and crafts people completed interiors before interior decorators began offering their services. Architects created the design of a building's structure and often the interiors. They would engage craftspeople to create and produce the furnishings needed to complete the interior. Other artisans lent their expertise with decorative embellishments and the production of handmade pieces for the interior. Of course all this was accomplished for the world of the wealthy and mighty, not for the average person.

Many historians have credited Elsie de Wolfe as the first person to successfully engage in interior decoration as a career separate from architecture. A about the turn of the 20th century, de Wolfe established a career by offering "interior decoration" services to her society friends in New York City. She was an actress and a society figure before she began to remodel her own home, transforming typically Victorian rooms with stylish simplicity by using white paint, cheerful colors, and flowery printed chinzes. Her friends recognized her alternative decor, which was great contrast to the dark, deep colors and wood of Victorian interiors. She is also believed to be among the first decorations to charge for her services rather than be paid only a commissions on the good she sold to clients.