Interior design as a profession is only a hundred year old occurrence but the roots originate to the first person to have tried to make his or her setting more at ease or aesthetic. Decorating their own home was a usual activity for middle-class women and this activity in combination with architectural interest in the design of the interiors ultimately led to the development of interior designing. It initially started as the art of decorating combining both form and function but now it has advanced by leaps and bounds. In today’s scenario it calls for a person who has sound knowledge in the highly specialized areas of interior design involving years of study and experience.
The term “Interior Decorator” was first used in America and most of the decorators at the time did not have any academic credentials but they did have a combination of good taste, common sense, and natural expertise to deduce and address the issues related to scale, proportion and aesthetic sense. Elsie de Wolfe was the first Interior Decorator to be provided a design “commission.” She published the first interior design book “The House in Good Taste” in the year 1913.
The term “Interior Designer” was coined in the 1930’s, by a magazine called “Interior Design and Decoration.” The history of interior design still lingers evolving in a world that is becoming more global and at the same time demanding the fine-focus of specialized areas of critical knowledge.