Introduction : Interiors and the designer -- The wind of change: the European home in 1700 -- Anglo-Saxon rectitude: the proportional interior in Britain and America -- Expanding horizons: Rococo and Chinoiserie -- Principles and proportion: the Neoclassical interior -- The democratic interior: celebrating the middle-class home in the early nineteenth century -- Backwards and forwards: 1851 and all that -- The colour of industry: western interiors and the possibilities of technology -- Mammon confronted: Arts and Crafts and design reform -- Clean and bright: the age of electricity -- Form and function: modernism and Art Deco -- Safety first: celebrating the familiar -- Embracing the machine: the postwar interior -- One foot in the past: back to the future -- Technology harnessed?: new century, new directions