interior decoration research articles

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock Locked padlock icon ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Publications
• Account settings
• Advanced Search
• Journal List

Importance of Interior Design: An Environmental Mediator for Perceiving Life Satisfaction and Financial Stress

Jeongah kim, wookjae heo.

• Author information
• Article notes
• Copyright and License information

Correspondence: [email protected]

Received 2021 Sep 1; Accepted 2021 Sep 24; Collection date 2021 Oct.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ).

Based on the stimuli–organism–response framework, this study investigates how artistic stimuli (i.e., interior design) influence a person’s mental responses (i.e., situational satisfaction and stress). Prior to checking the main analysis, demographic features were checked to determine whether they were significant precedents to the stimuli by using hierarchical linear modeling. As the main model, structural equation modeling was used to find (a) how stimuli (i.e., interior design) were associated with organisms (i.e., emotional perception) and (b) how organisms were associated with mental responses. The results showed that demographic features were not significantly associated with the stimuli. Stimuli were partially and significantly associated with organisms and the organisms were partially and significantly associated with the mental responses. The study has implications for practitioners in commercial fields who might recognize the importance of interior design and employ their utilities in practical applications.

Keywords: stimuli–organism–response framework, interior design, mental responses, emotional perception, HLM, SEM

1. Introduction

As is well known, the main purpose of commercial places is to generate profit. However, some commercial places, such as shopping malls, entertaining places (e.g., theaters), hospitality (e.g., hotels), counseling offices and therapeutic stores, help people to be mentally restored and healed (e.g., [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]). This implies that the environments of commercial places are not isolated from mental health. Rather, those places are associated with daily life and may be related to daily mental status. Even more, the frequency of visits to those sites might be more than the frequency of visits to actual medical facilities, such as hospital and therapists. Therefore, the environments of those facilities are assumed to be important to the mental status of the general population. As such, based on the importance of the environment in commercial places and their daily accessibility, this study investigates the effects of the environment on the mental responses to a commercial place, specifically, a store.

Based on the stimuli–organism–response (SOR) framework [ 4 ], the main purpose of this study was to check the effect of environmental stimuli on mental response. Because environmental stimuli can be enormously diverse, such as natural, working, local, rural/urban, psychological/emotional and social environments [ 5 ], a set of specific stimuli and corresponding responses was selected in this study. This set of various stimuli is considered an environmental load that results in complex responses, as the SOR framework explains [ 6 ]. Therefore, this study explored by what kind of complexity the environmental components were compounded and how they were related to a person’s response [ 7 ]. It was discovered that it was hard to notice which environmental component influenced a person when there were multiple environments compounded [ 8 ]. As a result, any certain environmental component should be specified in a study so that investigators might understand the specific component’s effect on a person [ 9 ].

Therefore, in this study, a specific environmental stimulus was selected, artistic interior design at a commercial store. Artistic interior design is normally known to be a part of marketing performance [ 10 , 11 ]. However, it is not just a marketing performance; it elaborates the consumers’ responses as an environmental stimulus [ 12 , 13 ] by provoking emotional and cognitive responses [ 14 , 15 ]. Therefore, the artistic interior design elements were considered as effective sensory stimuli to consumers [ 16 , 17 ]. The sensory stimuli to the consumers were linked to the mental responses and the corresponding mental responses of the artistic interior design included situational satisfaction and stress at the store. In addition, the commercial store is amongst the general environments where external factors (e.g., lighting, music, layout and others) influence a person and the consumer behavior generates from the general responses to the environment [ 12 ]. Consumers’ psychological responses to a store (e.g., consumer satisfaction) were considered a noticeable illustration of environmental effect by a store [ 18 , 19 ]. To sum up, the environmental effect at a store (i.e., artistic interior design) on a person (i.e., consumer) can be one of the representative analytic units for investigating how environments affect a person’s mental response and this study utilizes the specification as an analytic unit.

As explained in the Results and Discussion Sections, this study confirms the importance of environmental stimuli on a mental response. Specifically, the study checks how artistic stimuli are associated with market participants’ mental responses. Therefore, the contribution of the study emphasizes the importance of physical environments on mental responses. The finding can be adopted in various research areas that focus on where a person should take some emotional rest (e.g., hospitality, tourism, therapy, etc.). In addition, this study utilizes artistic stimuli as the specific stimuli. The results show that artistic stimuli are associated with mental response. This finding can be adopted by diverse practitioners who could improve their facilities with art for better mental responses of market participants.

2. Theoretical Background and Literature Review

2.1. stimuli–organism–response framework.

The SOR framework was introduced by Mehrabian and Russell [ 4 ] to understand how internal environments at a store influence a person [ 9 ]. The term of internal environments at a store can be considered as interior design [ 20 ]. Based on the SOR framework, the internal environments (e.g., interior design) are assumed to influence the primary emotional responses, called an organism in the framework [ 4 ]. By following the connection between internal environments (stimuli) and emotional responses (organism), the emotional responses are assumed to affect the behavioral responses (response). The behavioral responses include the verbal or non-verbal communication of preference of a person [ 4 ].

The first part of the SOR framework is the environmental effect on a person at a store. Internal environments at a store, such as interior design, are expected to evoke a person’s response. However, as explained in the introduction, a high-load environment may cause unpredictable responses from a person inside the store because a set of various stimuli might produce complex responses [ 6 ]. Therefore, a specific environmental component (i.e., artistic interior design) is examined, in this study, to learn how the artistic interior design influences a person’s response at a store. The details of the interior design are explained in Section 2.3 .

The second part of the framework is the organism, that is, the emotional responses of a person [ 4 , 9 ]. Generally, the emotional responses are not only one-directional emotions. Rather, the emotional responses can be observed to display various facets, such as intensity, pleasure, discomfort, activation and other multiple forms of emotions [ 21 , 22 ]. Therefore, in this study, multiple emotional responses were measured for the varieties of emotions: good, curious, excited, aroused, focused, annoyed, depressed, bored, nervous and timid. They were categorized into two major emotions, positive emotional perception and negative emotional perception at a store.

Finally, the response is how a person reacts to the environment (i.e., stimuli). Originally, Mehrabian and Russell [ 4 ] suggested two reactions, avoidance or approach. This means that a person who experienced the store would show one of two reactions: tendency not to come next time or tendency to come again next time. However, it was too generalized to just have two aspects of behavior. Therefore, Donovan and Rossiter [ 6 ] specified the reactions into three categories, each with varying degrees: (a) level of willingness to explore the environment, (b) level of willingness to interact with the others at the environment and (c) level of willingness to show satisfaction with the environment. Therefore, situational satisfaction and stress were selected to measure the three categories of responses in this study, which are explained in detail in the measurement section.

2.2. Demographics, Life Satisfaction and Interior Design to Responses

Demographic features are a person’s primary characteristics to be measured when studying a person’s situational behavior. Therefore, the responses (i.e., situational satisfaction and stress) through organism (i.e., positive and negative emotional perceptions) are, at times, considered to be associated with demographic features such as age and gender, specifically in terms of artistic situation [ 23 ]. In addition, artistic environments can be associated with high culture, exclusivity and luxury [ 24 , 25 ], regardless of the quality of artwork [ 26 ]. This implies that the level of education and income might be associated with art perception. Therefore, in this study, demographic features were tested to determine whether they were actual precedents of art perception.

As Lam [ 12 ] explained, interior environments at a store can be considered as situational environments of a consumer. Consumer satisfaction is a representative example of an environmental effect that influences a person’s psychological response to a certain place [ 19 ]. However, consumer satisfaction at a store is not a continuous satisfaction, such as life satisfaction, but a situational, spontaneous satisfaction. Considering that art is known to be strongly associated with quality of life or life satisfaction [ 27 ], the continuous satisfaction (i.e., life satisfaction) should be controlled when the model is conducted. Because this study focuses on the situational satisfaction obtained from a store, the continuous satisfaction level should be checked to determine whether it might influence the art perception. Therefore, in this study, life satisfaction was first checked to determine whether it was an actual precedent to art perception.

In addition, components of the interior design (i.e., stimuli) should be specified to refine the research model. Three components of interior design (i.e., decoration, color and lighting) were selected as the stimuli at a store. First, decoration was considered in this study. As various researchers explained (e.g., [ 6 , 8 , 9 ]) that art perception and a person’s response are associated with the complexity of environments. Based on Nasar [ 28 ], the environmental complexity includes varieties of decorations and visual richness. Second, color is also known to be an important interior design element that is associated with a person’s response, as well as emotional perception [ 29 , 30 , 31 ]. Specifically, a certain combination of colors has its own meanings [ 32 ], so that the colors are amongst the most significant factors at a store [ 33 ]. Third, lighting is considered as a potential environmental stimulus to influence consumers at a store [ 34 , 35 , 36 ]. As a result, three components of interior design (i.e., decoration, color and lighting) were the stimuli at a store in this study.

Finally, by considering that the environments, in this study, were specified as the interior design elements at a store, the responses were specified as consumers’ responses, including situational satisfaction and situational stress toward the store. In terms of situational satisfaction, as Donovan and Rossiter [ 6 ] suggested, one of the responses, as indicated in the SOR framework, is the level of willingness to show satisfaction about the environment (i.e., artistic interior design elements). Therefore, studying the respondents’ situational satisfaction was a possible way to measure the mental responses.

In the case of situational stress, financial stress was used in this study. Bearing in mind that the commercial environment (i.e., store) was given to consumers in this study, consumers were unsurprisingly exposed to the utility-seeking situation. It implies that monetary concern, which is a type of stress [ 37 ], may be inevitable in a person’s responses. Specifically, financial stress is a combination of a stressful situation and stress response [ 38 , 39 ]; this means that stress occurs where there is stressful situation and a stressful environment [ 40 ]. In addition, Sapolsky [ 41 ] explained that stress response (i.e., physiological response) is observed as being situational. For instance, financial stress was reported to be associated with situational satisfaction, such as that at the workplace [ 42 ]. As a result, the financial stress scale was developed based on the fact that a person perceives uncertainty as a potential risk or cause of harm [ 38 ]. Within the financial stress responses, Heo et al. [ 38 ] explained that there are multiple types of responses, such as the affective response and interactive responses. These responses are also conceptually connected to the SOR responses explained by Donovan and Rossiter [ 6 ]. The level of willingness to explore is associated with the affective response, while the willingness to interact with others is conceptually associated with the interactive responses.

2.3. Conceptual Framework and Research Hypotheses

Based on the theoretical background (i.e., SOR framework) and literature, the conceptual framework is shown in Figure 1 . In this study, there was a precedent added to the SOR framework. Because the general condition of an individual, such as life satisfaction and demographic factors, can be the precedents of the SOR model, they were added to the model. In addition, because the environment was the artistic interior design at a store, in this study, mental responses were measured by following the specific situation. As explained above, mental responses in this study include (a) situational satisfaction (i.e., satisfaction of a store) and (b) situational stress (i.e., financial stress).

Conceptual model of the study.

Prior to checking the above conceptual framework, the first and second research hypotheses were intended to check whether demographic factors and life satisfaction influence the perception of artistic environment in a certain situation (i.e., interior design at a store).

Hypothesis   1   (H1). Demographic features are associated with the perception of art of interior design.

Hypothesis   2   (H2). Life satisfaction is associated with the perception of art of interior design. Based on the results from the first two hypotheses, the following hypotheses checked the conceptual model as shown in Figure 1 .

Hypothesis   3   (H3). Interior design elements (i.e., art of color, art of lighting and art of decoration) are associated with positive/negative emotional perceptions of the environment.

Hypothesis   4   (H4). Positive/negative emotional perceptions of the environment are associated with situational responses (i.e., situational satisfaction, affective financial stress and interpersonal financial stress).

3. Data and Methodology

The sample was collected in South Korea and a random sampling survey was employed. An online survey agency was employed to perform random sampling. The survey company in South Korea randomly sent survey invitation emails to those who were listed in the company’s contact list. When a recipient of the invitation email accepted the invitation, the person could participate in the survey. Therefore, the study employed random selection with voluntary willingness to participate.

The sample size was 691, with 344 (49.78%) females and 347 (50.22%) males. The average age of the total sample was 39.29, with a standard deviation of 10.83. The minimum age requirement to answer the survey was 20 and the oldest age was 59. Working age was employed in this study. All respondents were given a situation in which they were shopping at a store. All respondents saw pictures of the same store with two different kinds of interior design, because one interior design did not secure the diversity of situational effects. Among 691 samples, 347 samples were randomly selected to see the Type A interior design. The other 344 samples were shown the Type B interior design. Because of copyright issues, the pictures were only allowed to be used in a survey; the pictures cannot be shown in the manuscript. However, by using two kinds of interior design of one store, the study secured the diversity of effects produced by interior design, as well as excluding the exogenous effects (e.g., external effects by differences in places). In other words, the usage of two different kinds of interior design had the purpose to exclude a nonsystematic error that could have occurred by using only one specific type of interior design. For instance, if only one specific type of interior design had been surveyed in the research, then consumers might have been biased by the picture itself. Therefore, two different types of pictures were shown in the survey as a strategy for the survey method.

In terms of educational level of the respondents, 121 respondents had completed high school or lower; 494 respondents had completed an associate degree (AA) or bachelor’s degree (BA) from a college or equivalent educational institute; 76 respondents had a graduate degree or higher-level education, such as professional certificate and doctoral degree. Among 691 samples, 360 respondents lived with a significant partner or were married; the other 331 were single, including unmarried, divorced and widowed. The monthly income of respondents was as follows: 72 earned lower than KRW 2 million; 240 respondents earned between KRW 2 million and KRW 4 million; 174 respondents earned from KRW 4 million to KRW 6 million; 124 respondents reported their income was between KRW 6 million and KRW 8 million; 81 participants answered that their income was over KRW 8 million.

3.2. Analytics

For the first two hypotheses (H1 and H2), hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was implemented. By adding additional factors in multiple linear models, HLM helps to find the effective factors on an outcome [ 43 ]. In this study, the nested model was utilized. The nested model utilizes the blocks for each set of factors to test the significance of a set of predictors [ 44 ]. By employing HLM, the two functions (Functions (1) and (2)) below were employed in this study.

where Y denotes the art perception of interior design to sum three interior design elements (i.e., art of color, art of lighting and art of decoration), which are explained in the measurement section, below; i is the model without life satisfaction; j is the model with life satisfaction as an additional predictor; LS denotes life satisfaction; b and s are coefficients; e and s are error terms.

In terms of the other hypotheses (H3 and H4), structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized for checking the association among stimuli, organism and response, as shown in Figure 1 above. SEM is well known for checking the directional association among selected variables by using the latent concept [ 45 , 46 ]. The construct of SEM follows the conceptual model of this study (see Figure 1 ). To implement the two methodologies above (i.e., HLM and SEM), Stata 15.1 was utilized.

3.3. Measurement

Demographic features were measured by asking the respondents for their gender, age, educational level, marital status and income level. For gender categorization, respondents were asked to answer male or female. Age was measured with the actual age of the respondent. For education level categorization, respondents were asked to answer by choosing one of three options: graduate high school; college degree, including associate degree and bachelor’s degree; higher than graduate degree. In the analytic stage (i.e., HLM), the education level was utilized by recoding as dummy variables. For marital status categorization, respondents were asked to answer single or married. Finally, income level was measured with monthly income by choosing from the following levels: lower than KRW 2 million, between KRW 2 million and KRW 4 million, between KRW 4 million and KRW 6 million, between KRW 6 million and KRW 8 million, and over KRW 8 million. KRW (won) is the Korean currency; KRW 1100 is equivalent to approximately USD 1.

Life satisfaction was measured with the five items introduced by [ 47 ]. After introducing it by referencing Diener et al. [ 47 ], the validity of the satisfaction-with-life scale (SWLS) was confirmed multiple times (e.g., [ 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ]). The scale included five items: (a) “In most ways my life is close to my ideal”; (b) “The conditions of my life are excellent”; (c) “I am satisfied with my life”; (d) “So far I have gotten the important things I want in life”; (e) “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing”. Responses to all five items were answered using a 7-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The total sum of the answers was used for indicating the respondent’s life satisfaction. Therefore, a higher number indicated a higher life satisfaction. In this study, with 691 samples, the Cronbach’s alpha of the SWLS was 0.87, which was sufficiently reliable over 0.70 [ 52 ].

To measure the environmental stimuli, emotional perception and mental response at a store (the store of a Korean fashion brand (i.e., KUHO) was used for this study), six pictures were shown to the respondents. All six pictures showed one store’s interior design from various angles, but there were two different sets of interior design. Each set of interior design consisted of three pictures based on the same interior design. All respondents were randomly shown one of two sets. By showing two sets of interior design of the same store, the perception of art was intended to be differentiated and the exogenous effect excluded.

In terms of environmental stimuli, three questions were asked regarding artistic stimuli from the interior design. Specifically, art of color, art of lighting and art of decoration were investigated by asking the respondents to rate the following three statements: (a) “I can feel the artistic expression by seeing the color of the store”; (b) “I can feel the artistic expression by seeing the lighting of the store”; (c) “I can feel the artistic expression by seeing the decorations of the store”. All statements were asked to be rated on a 5-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Each statement was utilized for art of color, art of lighting and art of decoration, respectively, as shown in Figure 1 . A higher number meant that a respondent felt a stronger response to artistic expression in color, lighting and decoration.

Emotional perception in a store was measured with ten items. Five items were used for measuring positive emotional perception and the other five items were utilized for measuring negative emotional perception. The questionnaire for measuring emotional perception of a store was adapted from Vukadin, Lemoine and Badot [ 53 ]. The first five items to measure positive emotional perception were as follows: “At the current store, do you feel (a) good; (b) curious; (c) excited; (d) aroused; and (e) focused?” The five items to measure negative emotional perception were as follows: “At the current store, do you feel (a) annoyed; (b) depressed; (c) bored; (d) nervous; and (e) timid?” Total sums of the answers were used for indicating the respondent’s positive and negative emotional perception. Therefore, a higher number of positive perceptions indicated that a respondent perceived the art at a store more emotionally positively, while a higher number of negative perceptions indicated that a respondent perceived the art at a store more emotionally negatively. In this study, reliability of these two emotional perceptions were confirmed, with the Cronbach’s alphas being 0.82 and 0.78, respectively, for positive and negative emotional perception.

Three facets of mental responses were measured: (a) situational satisfaction of a store, (b) situational stress by seeing affective financial stress and (c) situational stress by seeing interpersonal financial stress. As explained above, three kinds of levels can be measured for understanding a person’s mental responses: (a) level of willingness to show satisfaction from the environment, (b) level of willingness to explore the environment and (c) level of willingness to interact with the others in the environment. Considering that the given situation was a store, in this study, it was possible to measure the following: (a) the level of willingness to be satisfied with the store (i.e., situational satisfaction); (b) the level of willingness to explore the store can measure how a person was psychologically and whether they were stressed at the store (i.e., affective financial stress); (c) the level of willingness to interact with others at the store (i.e., interpersonal financial stress).

First, situational satisfaction was measured with a question: “Are you satisfied with the current store?” The question was answered on a 5-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Therefore, a higher score indicated higher satisfaction. Second, items relating situational stress, including affective financial stress and interpersonal financial stress, were adapted from Heo et al. [ 38 ]. Heo et al. [ 38 ] introduced a comprehensive financial stress scale (APR financial stress scale) using multiple dimensions, such as affective reaction, interpersonal response and physiological responses. Because this study showed pictures, physiological responses were not a valid measure of financial stress. Therefore, two dimensions (i.e., affective reaction and interpersonal responses) were employed in this study. Even if the APR financial stress scale has been relatively recently introduced, there are multiple literature sources to check the reliability and validity for its use in research (e.g., [ 39 , 54 , 55 ]). The three items for measuring affective financial stress were as follows: (a) “I feel sad because of my financial situation”; (b) “I feel anxious because of my financial situation”; (c) “I am easily irritated because of my financial situation”. The three items for measuring interpersonal financial stress were as follows: (a) “My financial situation interferes with my daily job performance”; (b) “I often argue with my spouse/significant other because of financial matters”; (c) “I frequently avoid attending family events because of my financial situation”. In this study, reliability of these two types of financial stress were confirmed, with the Cronbach’s alphas being 0.94 and 0.84, respectively, for affective financial stress and interpersonal financial stress.

4.1. Descriptive Summary

As shown in Table 1 , the average life satisfaction of the sample was 19.46 (SD = 5.86). The average for situational satisfaction was 3.50 (SD = 0.90). Simply comparing the two types of satisfaction with a variance comparison, they were significantly different ( f = 42.39, p < 0.001); life satisfaction was significantly higher than situational satisfaction. This implies that satisfaction can differ depending on the type and the situation, such as environments. The perception of the environment was measured by analyzing three aspects: color, lighting and decoration. The averages were 3.41 (SD = 0.99), 3.13 (SD = 1.01) and 3.37 (SD = 0.99), respectively, for interior design’s color, lighting and decoration. The average score of negative emotional perception at a store was lower than the score of positive perception. Positive emotional perception at a store was 15.09 (SD = 3.41), but negative perception was 10.25 (SD = 3.10). Finally, regarding financial situational stress, the scores were 8.08 (SD = 3.49) and 5.96 (SD = 2.69), respectively, for affective stress and interpersonal stress.

Descriptive summary of major scales ( n = 691).

4.2. Hierarchical Linear Modeling: H1 and H2

Table 2 shows the answers to the first and second hypotheses (H1 and H2). First, none of the demographic factors were significantly associated with the output, which was artistic perception of interior design (i.e., sum of color, lighting and decoration). In addition, the F statistic was not significant at the level of 0.05. This means that the model was not well fitted in terms of demographic factors. Therefore, to answer the first hypothesis (H1), demographic factors were not a precedent to the environmental stimuli. No specific demographic factor influenced the perception of art at a store, which, paradoxically, implied that an artistic environment might not be biased by the surroundings.

Hierarchical linear modeling with nested regression ( n = 648).

Note: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. Reference group for gender is male; reference group for education is graduate high school; reference group for marital status is single; reference group for income level is lower than KRW 2 million. The currency for income level is KRW (Korean won). LS denotes life satisfaction; Coef. means coefficient; S.E. is standard error.

On the other hand, as shown in the last two columns of Table 2 , life satisfaction was a significant precedent ( b = 0.06, p < 0.01) to artistic perception of the interior design at a store. The R 2 was increased from 0.02 to 0.04 when considering the factor of life satisfaction. In addition, the model became significant ( F = 2.65, p < 0.01); therefore, the model fit was good. The statistic for the block ( F = 11.26, p < 0.001) was significant as well, which implied that adding life satisfaction improved the model significantly. As a result, the answer to the second hypothesis (H2) was that life satisfaction should be a precedent for artistic perception of interior design (i.e., perception of environmental stimuli). This implies that life satisfaction is strongly associated with the perception of beneficial surroundings. To sum up the HLM results, demographic factors can be excluded from the conceptual model (see Figure 1 ), but life satisfaction should be kept in the conceptual model.

4.3. Structural Equation Modeling: H3 and H4

Based on the results from the first and second hypotheses, SEM tested how well the conceptual model fit among interior design (i.e., color, lighting and decoration), emotional perception (positive and negative) and situational mental responses (i.e., satisfaction and financial stress). The model fit of SEM was as follows: root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.082; Akaike information criterion (AIC) = 27,152.824; Bayesian information criterion (BIC) = 27,416.036; comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.960; Tucker Lewis index (TLI) = 0.929. In terms of RMSEA, values lower than 0.06 were preferred [ 56 ]; however, a value of about 0.08 was still acceptable [ 57 ]. CFI and TLI were recommended to be higher than 0.90 [ 45 , 46 ]. Therefore, the empirical model found in this study showed good/acceptable goodness-of-fit. This means that the dataset used in this study matched the conceptual model well.

As shown in Figure 2 and Table 3 , the same result from the second hypothesis was confirmed. Life satisfaction was significantly associated with the perception of art (i.e., art of color, art of lighting and art of decoration), given as environmental stimulus in this study. Life satisfaction was positively associated with art of color ( b = 0.11, p < 0.01), art of lighting ( b = 0.11, p < 0.01) and art of decoration ( b = 0.13, p < 0.01). This means that those who had higher life satisfaction would have a higher level of perceiving art from holistic interior design through all the detailed aspects of interior design, such as color, lighting and decoration. Interestingly, life satisfaction was associated with only positive emotional perception ( b = 0.07, p < 0.05), but not associated with negative emotional perception ( b = −0.07, p = 0.063).

Structural equation modeling results.

Direct effects between factors.

Note: ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. S.E. is standard error; LS means life satisfaction; CLR is art of color of interior design; LGT means art of lighting of interior design; DCR denotes art of decoration of interior design; PEP is positive emotional perception; NEP denotes negative emotional perception; SS is situational satisfaction; AFS means affective financial stress; IFS means interpersonal financial stress.

Figure 2 and Table 3 show the answers to the third and fourth hypotheses (H3 and H4). First, three interior design elements were all significantly and positively associated with positive emotional perception (H3). Art of color was significantly and positively associated with positive emotional perception ( b = 0.27, p < 0.001); art of lighting was significantly and positively associated with positive emotional perception ( b = 0.27, p < 0.001); art of decoration was significantly and positively associated with positive emotional perception ( b = 0.21, p < 0.001). This implies that those who perceive arts of interior design (i.e., color, lighting and decoration) are more likely to feel positive emotions (i.e., good, curious, excited, aroused and focused) from a store. However, in terms of negative emotional perception, the third hypothesis (H3) was partially rejected. Art of color was not significantly associated with negative emotional perception ( b = −0.09, p = 0.066); art of lighting was not significantly associated with negative emotional perception ( b = 0.03, p = 0.566); art of decoration was not significantly associated with negative emotional perception ( b = −0.01, p = 0.785). This implies that interior design was not associated with feeling negative emotions (i.e., annoyed, depressed, bored, nervous and timid) at a store. As a result, the third hypothesis (H3), that is, interior design elements, as environmental stimuli, influence the emotional perception as an organism (i.e., positive and negative emotional perception), was partially accepted.

Second, emotional perceptions were all significantly associated with situational satisfaction (H4). Positive emotional perception was significantly and positively associated with situational satisfaction ( b = 0.81, p < 0.001); negative emotional perception was significantly and negatively associated with situational satisfaction ( b = −0.23, p < 0.001). Those who had positive emotional perception of a store were more likely to show a higher level of situational satisfaction. However, those who had negative emotional perception of a store tended to have a lower level of situational satisfaction.

In terms of situational financial stress as part of the mental response, emotional perceptions were partially associated with situational stress (H4). Positive emotional perception was not associated with affective financial stress ( b = 0.01, p = 0.789) but significantly associated with interpersonal financial stress ( b = 0.12, p < 0.01). Those who received a positive feeling from a store did not report situational financial stress but showed the situational interpersonal financial stress. However, negative emotional perception was significantly associated with financial stress (i.e., affective financial stress and interpersonal financial stress). Negative emotional perception was significantly associated with affective financial stress ( b = 0.22, p < 0.001) and with interpersonal financial stress ( b = 0.32, p < 0.001). Those who received a negative feeling from a store reported a higher level of situational financial stress.

The findings of six sub-hypotheses reported further results, as shown in Table 4 . These included multiple mediation effects: (a) mediating effect of interior design (environmental stimuli) between life satisfaction (precedent) and emotional perception of a store (organism) and (b) mediating effect of emotional perception (organism) between interior design (environmental stimuli) and situational satisfaction and stress (mental responses). Consequently, the mediating effects found by six sub-hypotheses confirmed the conceptual model introduced above (see Figure 1 ).

Indirect effects among significant factors.

Note: S.E. is standard error; LS means life satisfaction; CLR is art of color of interior design; LGT means art of lighting of interior design; DCR denotes art of decoration of interior design; PEP is positive emotional perception; SS is situational satisfaction; IFS means interpersonal financial stress.

As shown in Table 4 , art of color mediated between life satisfaction and positive emotional perception with an indirect effect of 0.03 (=0.11 × 0.27). This means that color, as an interior design element, as well as an environmental stimulus, amplified the positivity in the organism. Similar to the art of color, the art of lighting and the art of decoration mediated between life satisfaction and positive emotional perception with an indirect effect of 0.03 (=0.11 × 0.27) and 0.03 (=0.13 × 0.21), respectively. This means that lighting and decoration as interior design elements, as well as environmental stimuli, amplified the positivity in the organism.

In addition, positive emotional perception mediated between interior design (environmental stimuli) and situational satisfaction (mental responses): (a) between art of color and situational satisfaction with an indirect effect of 0.22 (=0.27 × 0.81); (b) between art of lighting and situational satisfaction with an indirect effect of 0.03 (=0.27 × 0.81); (c) between art of decoration and situational satisfaction with an indirect effect of 0.17 (=0.21 × 0.81). Those who perceived the interior design as an artistic form (i.e., color, lighting and decoration) felt positive emotions (i.e., good, curious, excited, aroused and focused) at a store, leading to situational satisfaction as a mental response. Furthermore, positive emotional perception mediated between interior design (environmental stimuli) and interpersonal financial stress (i.e., situational mental responses): (a) between art of color and interpersonal financial stress with an indirect effect of 0.03 (=0.27 × 0.12); (b) between art of lighting and interpersonal financial stress with an indirect effect of −0.03 (=0.27 × 0.12); (c) between art of decoration and interpersonal financial stress with an indirect effect of 0.03 (= 0.21 × 0.12).

5. Discussion, Implications and Limitations

In this study, multiple findings are explained. First, there was not a significant association between demographic features and art perception at a store. Anyone can feel art, regardless of their income level, education level and gender. This result seems to be contrasting with the previous literature, such as Smith and Smith [ 23 ]. However, it might depend on what kinds of art are perceived by a person at a store. Specifically, Hagtvedt and Patrick [ 26 ] explained that the general connotation of art would be associated with consumers’ perception; this means that different kinds of art influence different kinds of demographic categories. As a result, the finding in this study implies that there were no differences in art perception based on demographic features. There should be different levels of art perception regardless of demographic features, where the artistic environment might not be biased by the surroundings. Therefore, to encourage specific mental responses at a store, art might be useful regardless of demographic features. For practitioners in commercial areas such as hospitality, counseling offices, aesthetic stores and others, the finding has implications that artistic interior design is useful regardless of their clients.

Then, the question moves on to how artistic interior design stimuli influence people at commercial places such as a store. The pathway from life satisfaction to mental responses (i.e., situational satisfaction and stress) in Figure 2 provides the answers. In terms of life satisfaction, those who had higher life satisfaction had a higher level of artistic perception from general interior design through all three components of interior design (i.e., color, lighting and decoration). This means that life satisfaction was a significant precedent to the perception of stimuli (i.e., art perception of interior design). The environmental stimuli, such as the artistic interior design elements at a store, could be better captured by a person when the person has higher life satisfaction. Specifically, life satisfaction and situational satisfaction were associated by only using the mediating effect of interior design (i.e., environmental stimuli) and emotional perception (i.e., organism), as shown in Figure 2 and Table 3 and Table 4 . Having higher life satisfaction was positively associated with three interior design elements (art of color, art of lighting and art of decoration), which increased positive emotional perception (i.e., organism). Finally, the increased positive emotional perception led to a higher level of situational satisfaction (i.e., mental responses). Therefore, the conceptual model ( Figure 1 ) was confirmed by the significant mediation of interior design and emotional perception toward situational satisfaction. This provides practical implications to practitioners in commercial areas who help clients’ mental responses. The pathway from interior design (i.e., stimuli) and emotional perception (i.e., organism) to situational satisfaction and stress (i.e., mental responses) emphasizes the importance of color, lighting and decoration of interior design.

Specifically, all three components of art were found to be significant stimuli at a store influencing the organism and mental responses. Three types of art of interior design (i.e., environmental stimuli) were positively associated with positive emotional perception (i.e., organism), which eventually significantly associated with situational satisfaction and interpersonal financial stress (i.e., mental response). Finally, it confirmed the conceptual model that environmental stimuli, organism and mental responses were significantly associated.

However, the paper still has a few limitations because this study employed an academic investigation instead of a large number of practical exercises. First, the survey questionnaires about consumers’ responses were delimited by an academic approach aimed to understand. For instance, the scale of affective financial stress and interpersonal financial stress are the proxy method to check whether the environment caused consumers mental health issues. The usage of the financial stress scale is the best method so far, but, in future research, any actual observation and experiments would allow for a better understanding of the association between financial stress and environmental stimuli. Second, the treatment was given as pictures. Because the efficient way to collect a large-sized sample through the survey method was using pictures in the questionnaire, this study utilized the efficient way. However, similarly to the first limitation, actual observation and experiments in future research are expected to confirm the results of this study.

6. Conclusions

The current paper studies the importance of interior design elements, including color, lighting and decoration. Practitioners may ask how to utilize color, lighting and decoration. Those utilizations might be found in the literature. For instance, cool tones at a store might help people to feel restored [ 30 , 58 , 59 , 60 ]. Some researchers claim that, by seeing warm color tones at a store, people might feel a higher level of anxiety [ 61 ] and show distractions [ 62 ]. Therefore, the artistic directors of those places where clients should be mentally restored (e.g., hospitality, counseling offices, aesthetic stores, etc.) might need to understand that a specific color is associated with specific clients’ reactions. In the case of lighting, lighting itself are reported to be associated with emotional perceptions at a store [ 35 , 63 ], similarly to the findings from this study. However, lighting depends on what kinds of restorative facilities are requested at a commercial place. Specifically, brighter light or darker light, compared to surrounding spaces, evokes different interests among people [ 64 , 65 ]. Therefore, practitioners at a restorative commercial place should understand the appropriate balance of lighting. To sum up, the findings from this study provide indications for useful utilization of artistic environments that can be adopted in diverse spaces, such as hospitals, counseling offices and therapeutic practices. Based on the present study’s result that artistic environments are stimuli that influence mental responses, future research would be expected to expand the concept of artistic environments toward comprehensive artistic effects of environments, including performing arts and visual arts. By exploring the comprehensive effects of artistic environments, future research would be expected to be more realistic and practical in professional areas.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.K.; methodology, W.H.; software, W.H.; validation, J.K.; formal analysis, W.H.; investigation, J.K.; resource, J.K., W.H.; writing—original draft preparation, J.K., W.H.; writing—review and editing, J.K., W.H.; visualization, J.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The survey for the study was conducted with being reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Keimyung University (40525-202105-HR-022-03, 3 August 2021).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• 1. Faigin D.A., Stein C.H. The power of theater to promote individual recovery and social change. Psychiatr. Serv. 2010;61:306–308. doi: 10.1176/ps.2010.61.3.306. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 2. Pohl C.D. Hospitality and the mental health of children and families. Am. J. Orthopsychiatry. 2011;81:482–488. doi: 10.1111/j.1939-0025.2011.01111.x. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 3. Rosenbaum M.S., Otalora M.L., Ramírez G.C. The restorative potential of shopping malls. J. Retail. Consum. Serv. 2016;31:157–165. doi: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2016.02.011. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 4. Mehrabian A., Russell J.A. An Approach to Environmental Psychology. MIT Press; Cambridge, MA, USA: 1974. pp. 62–65. [ Google Scholar ]
• 5. Deacon R.E., Firebaugh F.M. Family Resource Management: Principles and Applications. 2nd ed. Allyn and Bacon, Inc.; Boston, MA, USA: 1988. [ Google Scholar ]
• 6. Donovan R.J., Rossiter J.R. Store atmosphere: An environmental psychology approach. J. Retail. 1982;58:34–57. doi: 10.1016/0022-4359(94)90037-X. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 7. Mehrabian A. A questionnaire measure of individual differences in stimulus screening and associated differences in arousability. J. Nonverbal Behav. 1977;1:89–103. doi: 10.1007/BF01145458. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 8. Mehrabian A. Basic Dimensions for a General Psychological Theory. Oelgeschlager; Cambridge, MA, USA: 1980. [ Google Scholar ]
• 9. Vieira V.A. Stimuli–organism-response framework: A meta-analytic review in the store environment. J. Bus. Res. 2013;66:1420–1426. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.05.009. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 10. Moore C.M., Doherty A.M., Doyle S.A. Flagship stores as a market entry method: The perspective of luxury fashion retailing. Eur. J. Mark. 2010;44:139–161. doi: 10.1108/03090561011008646. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 11. Schiuma G. The Value of Arts for Business. Cambridge University Press; London, UK: 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• 12. Lam S.Y. The effects of store environment on shopping behaviors: A critical review. In: Gilly M.C., Meyers-Levy J., editors. Advances in Consumer Research. Volume 28. Association for Consumer Research; Valdosta, GA, USA: 2001. pp. 190–197. [ Google Scholar ]
• 13. Vukadin A., Wongkitrungrueng A., Assarut N. When art meets mall: Impact on shopper responses. J. Prod. Brand Manag. 2018;27:277–293. doi: 10.1108/JPBM-01-2017-1406. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 14. Koronaki E., Kyrousi A.G., Panigyrakis G.G. The emotional value of arts-based initiatives: Strengthening the luxury brandconsumer relationship. J. Bus. Res. 2018;85:406–413. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.10.018. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 15. Peluso A.M., Pino G., Amatulli C., Guido G. Luxury advertising and recognizable artworks: New insights on the “art infusion” effect. Eur. J. Mark. 2017;51:2192–2206. doi: 10.1108/EJM-09-2016-0496. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 16. Singh S. Impact of color on marketing. Manag. Decis. 2006;44:783–789. doi: 10.1108/00251740610673332. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 17. Solomon M.R. Consumer Behavior: Buying Having, and Being, 12th ed. Pearson; Hoboken, NJ, USA: 2017. p. 78. [ Google Scholar ]
• 18. Turley L.W., Milliman R.E. Atmospheric effect on shopping behavior: A review of the experimental evidence. J. Bus. Res. 2000;49:193–211. doi: 10.1016/S0148-2963(99)00010-7. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 19. Levy M., Weitz B.A. Retailing Management. 3rd ed. Irwin McGraw-Hill; Chicago, IL, USA: 1998. [ Google Scholar ]
• 20. Celadyn M. Interior Architectural Design for Adaptive Reuse in Application of Environmental Sustainability Principles. Sustainability. 2019;11:3820. doi: 10.3390/su11143820. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 21. Russell J.A., Barrett L.F. Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: Dissecting the elephant. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 1999;76:805–819. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.76.5.805. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 22. Russell J.A., Pratt G. A description of the affective quality attributed to environments. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 1980;38:311–322. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.38.2.311. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 23. Smith J.K.S.A.L.F., Smith L.F. Spending Time on Art. Empir. Stud. Arts. 2001;19:229–236. doi: 10.2190/5MQM-59JH-X21R-JN5J. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 24. Hoffman B. The Fine Art of Advertising. Stewart, Tabori and Chang; New York, NY, USA: 2002. [ Google Scholar ]
• 25. Shrum W.M. Fringe and Fortune: The Role of Critics in High and Popular Art. Princeton University Press; Princeton, NJ, USA: 1996. [ Google Scholar ]
• 26. Hagtvedt H., Patrick V.M. Art Infusion: The Influence of Visual Art on the Perception and Evaluation of Consumer Products. J. Mark. Res. 2008;45:379–389. doi: 10.1509/jmkr.45.3.379. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 27. Lee C.-W., Lin L.-C., Hung H.-C. Art and Cultural Participation and Life Satisfaction in Adults: The Role of Physical Health, Mental Health, and Interpersonal Relationships. Front. Public Health. 2021;8:582342. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.582342. [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 28. Nasar J.L. New developments in aesthetics for urban design. In: Moore G.T., Marans R.W., editors. Toward the Integration of Theory, Methods, Research, and Utilization. Springer; New York, NY, USA: 1997. pp. 149–193. [ Google Scholar ]
• 29. Bellizzi J.A., Crowley A.E., Hasty R.W. The effects of color in store design. J. Retail. 1983;59:21–45. [ Google Scholar ]
• 30. Yildirim K., Capanoğlu A., Cagatay K., Hidayetoğlu M.L. Effect of wall colour on the perception of hairdressing salons. J. Int. Colour Assoc. 2012;7:51–63. [ Google Scholar ]
• 31. Quartier K., Vanrie J., Van Cleempoel K. As real as it gets: What role does lighting have on consumer’s perception of atmosphere, emotions and behavior? J. Environ. Psychol. 2014;39:32–39. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.04.005. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 32. Kobayashi S. The aim and method of the color image scale. Color Res. Appl. 1981;6:93–107. doi: 10.1002/col.5080060210. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 33. Countryman C.C., Jang S. The effects of atmospheric elements on customer impression: The case of hotel lobbies. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 2006;18:534–545. doi: 10.1108/09596110610702968. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 34. Andreu L.E., Bigne R.C., Swaen V. How does the perceived retail environment influence consumers’ emotional experience? Evidence from two retail settings. Int. Rev. Retail Distrib. Consum. Res. 2006;16:559–578. doi: 10.1080/09593960600980097. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 35. Furnham A., Milner R. The impact of mood on customer behavior: Staff mood and environmental factors. J. Retail. Consum. Serv. 2013;20:634–641. doi: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2013.06.001. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 36. Rayburn S.W., Voss K.E. A model of consumer’s retail atmosphere perceptions. J. Retail. Consum. Serv. 2013;20:400–407. doi: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2013.01.012. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 37. Selye H. The Stress of Life. McGraw-Hill; New York, NY, USA: 1956. [ Google Scholar ]
• 38. Heo W., Cho S.H., Lee P. APR Financial Stress Scale: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Measurement. J. Financ. Ther. 2020;11:2. doi: 10.4148/1944-9771.1216. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 39. Heo W., Lee J.M., Park N. Financial-related psychological factors affect life satisfaction of farmers. J. Rural. Stud. 2020;80:185–194. doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.08.053. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 40. Lazarus R.S., Folkman S. Stress: Appraisal and Coping. Springer; New York, NY, USA: 1984. [ Google Scholar ]
• 41. Sapolsky R.M. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. W. H. Freeman; New York, NY, USA: 1994. [ Google Scholar ]
• 42. Kim J., Garman E.T. Financial Stress, Pay Satisfaction and Workplace Performance. Compens. Benefits Rev. 2004;36:69–76. doi: 10.1177/0886368703261215. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 43. Affrunti N.W., Woodruff-Borden J. The effect of maternal psychopathology on parent–child agreement of child anxiety symptoms: A hierarchical linear modeling approach. J. Anxiety Disord. 2015;32:56–65. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2015.03.010. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 44. StataCorp . Stata Base Reference Manual: Release 17. Stata Press; College Station, TX, USA: 2021. [ Google Scholar ]
• 45. Hoyle R.H. Structural Equation Modeling: Concepts, Issues, and Applications. Sage Publication; Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• 46. Kline R.B. Principles and Practices of Structural Equation Modeling. 3rd ed. Guilford Press; New York, NY, USA: 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• 47. Diener E., Emmons R.A., Larsen R.J., Griffin S. The satisfaction with life scale. J. Personal. Assess. 1985;49:71–75. doi: 10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 48. Diener E., Inglehart R., Tay L. Theory and Validity of Life Satisfaction Scales. Soc. Indic. Res. 2013;112:497–527. doi: 10.1007/s11205-012-0076-y. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 49. Pavot W., Diener E., Colvin C.R., Sandvik E. Further Validation of the Satisfaction with Life Scale: Evidence for the Cross-Method Convergence of Well-Being Measures. J. Pers. Assess. 1991;57:149–161. doi: 10.1207/s15327752jpa5701_17. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 50. Pavot W., Diener E. Review of the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Psychol. Assess. 1993;5:164–172. doi: 10.1037/1040-3590.5.2.164. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 51. Pavot W., Diener E. The Satisfaction with Life Scale and the emerging construct of life satisfaction. J. Posit. Psychol. 2008;3:137–152. doi: 10.1080/17439760701756946. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 52. Nunnally J.C. Psychometric Theory. 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill; New York, NY, USA: 1978. Assessment of reliability. [ Google Scholar ]
• 53. Vukadin A., Lemoine J., Badot O. Store ratification and retail performance. J. Mark. Manag. 2019;35:634–661. doi: 10.1080/0267257X.2019.1583681. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 54. Choi S.L., Heo W., Cho S.H., Lee P. The links between job insecurity, financial well-being and financial stress: A moderated mediation model. Int. J. Consum. Stud. 2020;44:353–360. doi: 10.1111/ijcs.12571. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 55. Choi S.L., Heo W. Financial Constraints, External Locus of Control, and Emotional Exhaustion. J. Financ. Couns. Plan. 2021 doi: 10.1891/JFCP-20-00033. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 56. MacCallum R.C., Browne M.W., Sugawara H.M. Power analysis and determination of sample size for covariance structure modeling. Psychol. Methods. 1996;1:130–149. doi: 10.1037/1082-989X.1.2.130. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 57. Browne M.W., Cudeck R. Alternative Ways of Assessing Model Fit. In: Bollen K., Long J., editors. Testing Structural Equation Models. Sage; Newbury Park, CA, USA: 1993. pp. 230–258. [ Google Scholar ]
• 58. Bellizzi J.A., Hite R.E. Environmental color, consumer feelings, and purchase likelihood. Psychol. Mark. 1992;9:347–363. doi: 10.1002/mar.4220090502. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 59. Crowley A.E. The two-dimensional impact of color on shopping. Mark. Lett. 1993;4:59–69. doi: 10.1007/BF00994188. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 60. Babin J.B., Hardesty D.M., Suter T.A. Color and shopping intentions: The intervening effects of price fairness and perceived affect. J. Bus. Res. 2003;56:541–551. doi: 10.1016/S0148-2963(01)00246-6. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 61. Jacobs K.W., Suess J.F. Effects of Four Psychological Primary Colors on Anxiety State. Percept. Mot. Ski. 1975;41:207–210. doi: 10.2466/pms.1975.41.1.207. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 62. Gerard R.M. Ph.D. Thesis. University of California; Los Angeles, CA, USA: 1957. Differential Effects of Colored Lights on Psychophysiological Functions. [ Google Scholar ]
• 63. Küller R., Ballal S., Laike T., Mikellides B., Tonello G. The impact of light and colour on psychological mood: A cross-cultural study of indoor work environments. Ergonomics. 2006;49:1496–1507. doi: 10.1080/00140130600858142. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 64. Areni C.S., Kim D. The influence of in-store lighting on consumers’ examination of merchandise in a wine store. Int. J. Res. Mark. 1994;11:117–125. doi: 10.1016/0167-8116(94)90023-X. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]
• 65. Custers P.P., de Kort Y., Ijsselsteijn W., De Kruiff M. Lighting in retail environments: Atmosphere perception in the real world. Light. Res. Technol. 2010;42:331–343. doi: 10.1177/1477153510377836. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ]

Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

• View on publisher site
• PDF (873.3 KB)
• Collections

Similar articles

Cited by other articles, links to ncbi databases.

• Download .nbib .nbib
• Format: AMA APA MLA NLM

Add to Collections

• Become a Sponsor
• Become an Interior Design Educator
• Job Searching Listings
• Become a Member

Publications

• Journal of Interior Design
• IDEC Exchange
• Conference Proceedings
• Member Published Books
• Innovative Teaching Ideas

Conferences & Events

• IDEC Conferences
• Regional Conferences
• Symposia + Workshops
• Submission Rubrics
• Competitions & Grants

• IDEC Competitions
• IDEC Grants
• Open Calls & Opportunities

• Sponsorship Opportunities
• Call for Volunteers
• JID Volunteer Reviewer
• Participate in Research
• Become Member
• Publications Overview
• Regional Conference Proceedings
• Conference & Events Overview

• Competitions + Grants + Awards Overview

The Journal of Interior Design is an academic publication exploring various interior environment aspects. It welcomes diverse and interdisciplinary research to advance the field. The journal focuses on studying the interior of design, human perception, behavior, and experiences, covering all scales and conditions. The research published in the journal influences interior design education, practice, research, criticism, and theory.

Members of IDEC can access the journal as a membership benefit. Access requires logging in with IDEC membership information. You can also view the 2020 Publishers Report for the journal.

Gain insights into the latest discussions in the field of interior design by reading the latest issues of the Journal of Interior Design.

Journal of Interior Design (JID)‎ FAQ

Quickly find answers to common question queries regarding The Journal of Interior Design through our Frequently Asked Questions section.

The Review Process

Have you ever wondered what happens to your essay or manuscript once it is submitted to the  Journal of Interior Design (JID)? In this webinar, the editors and reviewers detail the review process for  JID .

The webinar is divided into five parts:

• a detailed description of the review process by Joan Dickinson, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief (EIC)
• factors considered when reading the initial submittal of the manuscript/essay by Lynn Chalmers, Ph.D., Associate Editor (AE), Joan Dickinson, Ph.D., EIC, and Nam-Kyu Park, Ph.D., AE
• the notice of revision (NOR): What is this? What does it look like? by Joan Dickinson, Ph.D., EIC
• how to respond to reviewer comments by Joan Dickinson, Ph.D., EIC
• reviewer perspectives and insights regarding the review process by Mary Anne Beecher, Ph.D., Anna Marshall-Baker, Ph.D., and Marilyn Read, Ph.D.

Specifically, the editors provide increased transparency of how the review process works for JID. The steps involved once the manuscript is received through Scholar One/Manuscript Central (the website used for manuscript submittal) are described. Additionally, insight from the review board provides an additional layer of guidance on what to expect once your manuscript or essay is reviewed and returned. The webinar is available for viewing at:  https://youtu.be/wdHJTTwChpk .

The Journal will then host a live session on Thursday, April 7 from 3:00-4:30 PM EST , to enable dynamic discussion and answer questions related to the online webinar. The live session will give new authors, graduate students, and established authors the opportunity to meet the editorial staff along with the editorial review board to ask questions. The live session will address:

• Discussion and questions regarding the review process.
• Guidance for new authors, graduate students, and established authors submitting revised manuscripts or essays.
• Insight from reviewers and editors on factors considered when reading the initial submittal of a manuscript or essay.

The webinar is free to anyone interested in submitting an article to JID. Pre-registration is required for the access links.

Crafting a Successful Submission to JID

Providing strategies for ‎crafting a successful submission

The webinar is divided into four distinct parts: ‎

• introduction and  JID  Mission Statement (minute 00)‎
• visual essays moderated by Lynn Chalmers, Ph.D. (minute 2:50) ‎
• articles from a humanities perspective discussed by Ronn Daniel, M. Arch (minute 22:08)
• social sciences approach by Joan Dickinson, Ph.D. (minute 44:27)‎

This webinar encourages a variety of research approaches, examines the rubrics used by external ‎reviewers when evaluating an article or visual essay, and offers insight into how to prepare a ‎submission that supports the author’s viewpoints along with suggestions for carefully developing ‎interior-based content for positive review.

JID Board of Directors

Alison Snyder

Chair Pratt Institute

Mary Ann Beecher

Editor-in-Chief Ohio State University

Lynn Chalmers

Associate Editor  Independent Scholar, Manitoba CAN

Marilyn Read

Associate Editor Oregon State University, USA

JID Director Florida State University

Helen Turner

JID Director University of Kentucky

IDEC Liaison to the Board of Directors

Kent State University

Log into your IDEC account to view the JID P&P in the  Member Center .

New Virtual Issue

In the latest virtual issue, When You Can’t – Designing Supportive Housing for Refugees, Dr. ‎Tasoulla Hadjiyanni asks readers to consider the following: “What does home mean to you? What ‎defines your identity, and who would you be if you lost those elements that constitute your being? ‎Then, take a look around your home and ask yourself: What would I take with me if I had to flee ‎my house while bombs were falling all around me? And, how would I pick up the pieces to rebuild ‎my life as a refugee?” Dr. Hadjiyanni, who sought refuge at a Meneou plantation during Turkey’s ‎invasion of Cyprus, curates JID articles focused on vulnerability, dignity, and resilience that ‎provide design recommendations related to supportive housing. As you read these papers, ask ‎yourself: What kind of design interventions can you employ to transform housing into home for a ‎population that hopes their relocation will be a temporary situation? And, how can design help ‎heal the traumas of displacement, restoring dignity and a belief in the future?‎

JID Award Recipients

Jid best article.

PJ Carlino Ph.D. JID  46.1  Tied to the Desk: The Somatic Experience of Office Work, 1870–1920  (pages 27-43)

Giyoung Park Ph.D., Upali Nanda Ph.D., Lisa Adams, Jonathan Essary M.Arch., Melissa Hoelting B. Arch, HKS, USA JID  45.1  Creating and Testing a Sensory Well-Being Hub for Adolescents with Developmental Disabilities  (pages 13-32)

Stephanie Liddicoat JID  44.2  Spirituality in Therapeutic Spaces: Perceptions of Spatiality, Trace, and Past Rituals Manifesting Present Occupation  (pages 26-42)

Amy Huber JID  43.4  Exploring Hiring Practitioner Preferences for and Assessment Practice of Prospective Candidates  (pages 21-44)

Xiaobo Quan, Anjali Joseph, & Upali Nanda JID  42.1  Developing Evidence-based Tools for Design and Evaluating Hospital Inpatient Rooms  (pages 19-38)

Dianne Smith & Linda Lilly JID  41.2  Understanding Student Perceptions of Stress in Creativity-Based Higher Education Programs: A Case Study in Interior Architecture  (pages 39-55)

JID Outstanding Reviewer of the Year

Jid resources & opportunities.

Call for JID Ad-Hoc Reviewer

The Board of Directors of the  Journal of Interior Design (JID) invites applications for an Ad-Hoc Reviewer.

Special Issue Call for Papers

View submission deadlines and requirements for the Call for Papers for the  Special Issue for the  Journal of Interior Design (JID)

Theme:  Leading by Design: Evolving Practices to Face the Challenges of our Times

Scholarly Publishing Resources

Andrew M. Ibrahim, MD, MSc1, Justin B. Dimick, MD, MPH2 1Department of Surgery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States; 2Department of Surgery, Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States

• IDEC History
• IDEC Board of Directors
• IDEC Annual Reports
• Governing Documents
• IDEC Regions
• IDEC Partners
• Conferences

Competitions + Grants

Opportunities.

• Member Center

Career Center

Competitions + grants + awards.

© 2024 Interior Design Educators Council

Privacy Policy     Terms + Conditions     Privacy Settings     Refund Cancellation Policy

Interior Design

• Articles & Journals
• Professional Development
• Literature Review

Article Databases for Interior Design

• Arts Premium Collection This link opens in a new window ProQuest Arts Premium Collection encompasses cross-searchable databases with thousands of journal titles, ensuring deep searches of extensive collections in Art, Design, Architecture, Humanities, Film/Screen Studies, Music, Performing Arts, and more. Consists of 9 databases: •ARTBibliographies Modern (ABM) •Design and Applied Arts Index (DAAI) •International Bibliography of Art (IBA) •Arts and Humanities Full Text (A&H FT) •American Film Institute Catalog (AFI) •FIAF Plus •Film Index International (FII) •International Index to Music Periodicals Full Text (IIMP FT) •International Index to Performing Arts Full Text (IIPA FT).
• Art & Architecture Complete This link opens in a new window Provides full text of 350+ journals and 200+ books dealing with art and architecture. Also indexes many other art and architecture publications and includes 60,000+ images.
• Design and Applied Arts Index This link opens in a new window This database is the premier source of information for all aspects of design and crafts, from textiles and ceramics to vehicle design, advertising and sustainability. Covers journal articles, exhibition reviews and news items from 1973 to the present.
• International Bibliography of Art This link opens in a new window The definitive resource for scholarly literature on Western art, IBA is the successor to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), and retains the editorial policies which made BHA one of the most trusted and frequently consulted sources in the field. The database includes records created by the Getty Research Institute in 2008-09, with new records created by ProQuest using the same thesaurus and authority files.
• ARTBibliographies Modern This link opens in a new window This database is the only specialist bibliography available for the study of modern and contemporary art. Covers all art forms, including fine art, digital art, crafts, design and photography. Features full abstracts and indexing from art journals published from the late 1960s onwards. Also incorporates book records, including those drawn from the collections of the Tate Library and the Bibliothèque Dominique Bozo, Musée LAM.
• Applied Science & Technology Retrospective This link opens in a new window Contains historic (1912-1983) scholarly and popular articles related to engineering, construction management, architecture, chemistry, computer and information technology, geology, & physics. Linked full text only.

Interior Design Journals

A selection of journals available at Hunter Library. The list includes a mixture of peer-reviewed, trade, and popular titles.

• << Previous: Home
• Next: Books >>
• Last Updated: Sep 23, 2024 5:31 PM
• URL: https://researchguides.wcu.edu/interior-design

HUNTER LIBRARY

176 Central Drive Cullowhee, NC 28723 Administration: 828-227-7485 Reference: 828-227-7465 Circulation: 828-227-7485

QUICK LINKS

Ask-A-Librarian Reserve a Study Room My Account Library Catalog Article Databases Interlibrary Loan

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• My Account Login
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 27 March 2018

The interior as interiority

• Vlad Ionescu 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  4 , Article number:  33 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

19k Accesses

1 Altmetric

Metrics details

The goal of the following article is two-fold: first, it aims to introduce some of the fundamental challenges concerning the theory of interior design, with the aspiration of stimulating further research on the topic, notably concerning the relationship of interior design to adaptive re-use, anthropology and the fine arts. Second, the text introduces a series of essays that complement this paper, which have been collected under the title Interiorities: Artistic, Conceptual and Historical Reassessments of the Interior . The collection proposes an interdisciplinary approach of the interior, both as an architectural challenge and as an opportunity to represent subjectivity in all its dimensions, as understanding, reflection, memory, imagination and affect.

Introduction

Architectural history has long conceived the interior as a distinct aspect of architectural design. Various historical studies have documented how an interior’s identity can evolve independently of the architectonic structure of a building (Hollis, 2009 ; Massey, 1997 ). Interiors constitute the most fragile feature of design because they are often temporary and secondary additions. They can be conceived simultaneously with the building but they are also easily transferrable and adaptable. Sometimes interior design emerges simultaneously with the exterior structure, like in the case of Art Nouveau. As Walter Benjamin argued, when the architect designs both the furniture and the structure, the interior loses its autonomy and becomes highly individualistic (Benjamin, 1999 , p 9). Interior and structure follow one organic sense of form; they grow as if from one germ. However, this holistic conception of the Jugendstil signals an ambiguity about the architectural status of the interior: is it supposed to be conceived separately from the rest of a building? This ambiguity regarding the interior justifies the distinction between decorator and interior designer (Massey, 1997 ). A subtle gradation determines the relation between the two: if the decorator has less of an impact on a building’s structural identity, this is because to decorate implies a different relation to the identity of a building. Adorning and integrating objects within its structure affects its spatial experience (but not yet its structure). Any intervention on this level is easily reversible and adaptable. Decorating and designing an interior space concern distinct levels of interventions, determining to different degree the extent to which architecture can change.

Nevertheless, the mere regulative distinction between decoration versus structure echoes another well-known dichotomy in modern thought, namely Kant’s distinction between ornament ( parerga , something secondary) and pure form as the authentic constituent of beauty (Kant, 2000 , pp 110–111). In the foundational work of modern aesthetics, The Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790), interior design returns at key moments. Kant argued that decorations of all sorts (from wallpapers to mouldings and furnishings, rings and pill boxes) represent actual beauty because they are there without any use, “merely to be viewed, in order to entertain the imagination in free play with ideas and to occupy the power of aesthetic judgement without a determinate end” (Kant, 2000 , p 201). Lack of a function guarantees a pure aesthetic experience. On the other hand, too much charm, external addenda and draperies, sensations and frames inhibit the pure aesthetic judgment (which concerns form, structure and outline). The history and theory of interior design has proved that this dichotomy between decorations and structures, between passing charms and pure forms, is more complex. Recent research has provided comprehensive historical overviews of interior design (Sparke, 2008 ; Pile and Gura, 2014 ; Raizman, 2003 ). Architectural theory approached the interior in a broader conceptual sense, combining a speculative philosophy and the phenomenology of dwelling–the “usual suspects” have been Gaston Bachelard, Martin Heidegger or Christian Norberg-Schultz–with the more prescriptive insights of modern architects. (Taylor and Preston, 2006 ; Lane, 2007 ; Weinthal, 2011 ).

However, interior design is more than a spatial arrangement or a collection of objects. We argue that the interior is a moment when a building receives its cultural significance. It is through interior design that a tectonic structure “speaks” to its users, involves their gender differences and division of roles. Architecture enters cultural debates when it is arranged as an interiority, that is to say, as a place that distributes functions (work, rest, move, etc.) in a given community. Existing literature has pinpointed this intuition: the “political interior” is the moment went a design is integrated in a broader cultural debate about the division of space according to responsibilities, traditions and rights (Thompson and Blossom, 2015 ). Mark Pimplott’s notion of the “public interior” also designates a cultural space that people continuously negotiate (Pimlott, 2016 ). Interior design and decoration are more than sartorial additions that cover an engineered structure; they are a necessary dimension that turn architectural space into a liveable place with a given stability, desirable order and readable cultural hierarchy (Verschaffel, 2002 ).

The fact that interiors can change explains their adjustable and transient nature; it also justifies adaptive re-use as an inherently critical function of interior design. Interiors are converted also because of an inherent qualitative difference , as Trachtenberg has convincingly shown, between the time of the building and the time of its lifeworld (Trachtenberg, 2010 ). Buildings tended to outlast, at least in the premodern world, the changes in the lifeworld. Historical time can involve faster changes than the time of a building. This interesting analysis raises even more pregnant questions regarding the interior, the most temporary dimension of any building. When buildings change “from inside out”, the new interior always and already says something about the world that changes outside itself. The adapted building is as much of a palimpsest as a city’s urban fabric (Machado, 1976 ; Corboz, 2001 ); yet the re-adaptable interior is a profoundly political palimpsest as it testifies to economic, religious or artistic changes (Hegewald and Subrata, 2012 ). When the profane takes over the sacred space faster than ever and when contractors determine the identity of the built environment, adaptive reuse can no longer just be a question of aesthetic taste and a vaguely felt mood. The adapted interior should represent these vehement changes in the way that communities chose to value their world.

This brings us to the idea that the interior has always been indistinguishable from people’s inner life - let us call it their interiority . The writer’s room is more than an enclosed space where someone writes but a carrier of specific types of imagination, that of a novelist or of a psychoanalyst (Fuss, 2004 ; Rosner, 2005 ; Bauer, 2016 ). As Virginia Wolf observed, the kitchen is the space where a social type emerges, namely the cook, a character that changes from the Georgian cook–“a creature of sunshine and fresh air; in and out of the drawing-room, now to borrow The Daily Herald , now to ask advice about a hat”–to the Victorian cook who “lived like a leviathan in the lower depths, formidable, silent, obscure and inscrutable” (Wolf, 1924 , p 5). In other words, the interior is an intramural arrangement of any built environment that actualises a specific interiority . The interior is the condition of possibility that allows us to represent these (inter-)subjective dimensions: power relations, intimacy, (semi-) public encounters, imagination, memory, attention, desires and understanding. These dimensions define our symbolic representation, the ability that overcomes our biological adaptability and allows us to understand and represent the world through language. Domesticity is such a specifically human language, not just a spatial but also a symbolic arrangement of the interior as a home. The home is the house that contains a given symbolic order, stability and sense of time (Verschaffel, 2002 ; Rice, 2007 ; Smyth and Croft, 2006 ). The difference between a home and hotel apartment concerns less the interior design and the spatial arrangement as the inhabitant’s temporal, emotional and imaginative relation to the interior. The home implies a strongly embodied relation between an interior and the sense of interiority that it brings about (memories, sense of time, directions, fantasies, etc.).

Interiority as a figure

The thematic article collection that this article accompanies Footnote 1 addresses this complex relation between interior design and interiority, between architectural structures and the subjectivity that they engender or challenge. The house (interior) as a home (interiority) is particularly revealing because the modern rationalist design emerges in debates concerning interior design. Already in the middle of the 19th century, Jakob von Falke (the first curator of the Viennese Museum of Applied Arts) referred to the Renaissance interior as rational and adaptable to modern life (Von Falke, 1866 ). The Renaissance interior was also the model for Georg Hirth as it harmonises structure and ornament (Hirth, 1886 ). The rational adaptability that modern life requires was related to interior design. Cornelius Gurlitt, besides famously revaluing Baroque architecture, also described the rules that the bourgeois house was supposed to follow (Gurlitt, 1888 ). Modern life, from the middle of the 19th century onwards, is centred around an interior that accommodates its fundamental values, that is, the rational spatial division, the employment of honest materials and linear shapes that accentuate function. Nevertheless, Gurlitt integrates interior design into the broader reflection on taste: even though the bulk of his Im Bürgerhause consists of a collection of thoughts on each segment of a modern home, he relates questions of style to literature and painting. Before asking what a stylish interior is, Gurlitt wonders whether the style of a poem is something eternal and human or something ephemeral, “measured to us and our time” ( das uns und unserer Zeit Gemässe , Gurlitt, 1888 , p 33).

Reflecting on the interior means debating our interiority, more precisely clarifying our understanding of the past, both its aesthetic values and our specific understanding of style, including the role that fashion plays. Reflecting on interior design is not just a question of arranging and designing furniture, choosing appropriate colours or adapting past building to new requirements; it is a question of building up a scenography for our subjective life, our values, emotions and thoughts. The modernist adaptation of forms to functions means precisely that the interiority of the modern subject has become an adaptable machine. A lot of contemporary interior design, especially in the context of retail, aims at the mechanisation of human interiority, its adaptation to a flat process of consumption, adjusting it to one function only: consume.

However, the correlation between interior design and interiority is immanent for reasons of representation. Theorists like Gaston Bachelard and novelists like Georges Perec were quite aware that the interior has always been a figure of consciousness in all its dimensions. Interiority is a space where all the trajectories of consciousness as intentional experience unfold, from awareness to remembrance and imagination. In this sense, the interior is a constitutive figure of consciousness, as Jean-Louis Chrétien has shown, from Augustine to Montaigne and beyond (Chrétien, 2014 ). In medieval times, closing the door of a room and falling back on oneself was an opportunity to encounter God in the cubiculum cordis , the so-called closed “room of the heart” (Chrétien, 2014 , p 47). One could be on one’s own but this condition facilitated prayers, reflections, meditations, etc. The interior was a closed room but interiority (the cubiculum cordis ) was directed somewhere else. With Montaigne ( On Solitude ), being alone captures the modern condition of reflecting autonomously, alone with oneself. Even though Augustine wrote his Soliloquies in order to know himself, this self-knowledge constantly presupposes the presence of the Almighty. With the moderns, the interior of a room is a safe space of a monologue, with no necessary relation to any God (Chrétien, 2014 , p 93). Nevertheless, interiority in all its forms–from the monk’s cell (Guillaume de Saint-Thierry) to cultivating one’s garden (Voltaire)–shapes both the secular and the religious consciousness.

Significant here is that this representation of the inner space affects the way we represent the world to ourselves. It is in this sense that interior design is significant: the interior is a figure of our subjectivity but this is only important because it signals how we think of the world outside of ourselves: Voltaire’s garden suggests a reflective stance that delimits the complex world to limited, local and direct activities; Montaigne’s closed room suggests that thinking the world necessitates this temporary seclusion. The pre-modern understanding of the interior as an openness towards divinity becomes in modernity a position that thinking takes towards the world. We could quote the usual examples and move from Xavier de Maistre’s Voyage Around My Room (1794), which represents an entire world from the confines of a bedroom, to George Perec’s interior as a seralisation of objects, movements and operations. Perec’s significance becomes obvious when we read Species of Spaces ( 2008 ) together with An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris ( 2010 ) and Penser/Classer ( 2003 ). This parallel reading proves that interiority, the inner life of the mind, becomes a way of perceiving the 'public interior' (to use Pimlott’s notion) as sequences, classification and processes. With Perec, the interior is a model for representing the exterior world. In Thomas Bernhard’s Old Masters ( 2010 ), a museum room with a Tintoretto painting and a settee facilitates an entire narrative improvisation and social commentary. The museum interior is here an opportunity to criticise modern society, its values and cultural choices. The interior opens up the protagonist’s interiority, a space with own depth, imagination, directions and borders.

From art history to theory

Hence, the precisely delimited enquiry of the interior as interiority: the interior is analysed in order to deduce how the world as a horizon is represented, addressed and modified. The accompanying thematic collection approaches this subject from a systematic point of view, combining different positions, from the history of art and architecture to architectural theory and philosophy. The content can be divided into two thematic sections, the first concerning conceptual approaches of the interior as interiority, and the second discussing art historical approaches of the same topic. Regarding the first approach, Verschaffel’s essay addresses the interior as a concept distinguished from a generic “outside”; interior design debates this dialectic and makes sense when the interior is thematised as a series of demarcations and transitions, from the original womb to the house (Verschaffel, 2017 ). The essay provides descriptions of the interior’s constitutive elements: the floor (related to earth), the wall (related to the world) and the roof (related to heaven). A similar topological approach returns in Forino’s intervention, a profound and original look into spatializing elements within the interior (the Renaissance studiolo , the bed, the window) that crystalize inherently human dimensions like attention and reflection (Forino, 2017 ). The notion of interno nell’interno tackles precisely the architectural potential that these “residual spaces” have. These elements represent subjectivity as an interiority where memory, reflection, mediation and introspection define its infinite propensity.

Consciousness is thus built on architectural principles and these tectonic figures return in the paper by Wambacq and van Tuinen ( 2017 ). The authors compare the anthropological philosophy of Peter Sloterdijk with the one signed Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Sloterdijk’s images of interiors (from the bubble to the uterus) is contrasted to Deleuze and Guattari’s reception of the Umwelt (Jakob von Uexüll) as an opening up of organisms towards the world. For Sloterdijk civilisation is a process that projects the protective sense of an interior onto an increasingly colonised and foreign exterior. The interior is a process that formats the unknown, rendering it familiar. For Deleuze and Guattari, organisms fold on each other, like the orchid and the wasp, one entity emulating a part of the other. Instead of borders that divide the interior and the exterior, the known and the unknown, Deleuze and Guattari propose an absolute exterior, imagined as a series of transitions between intervals that interact and fracture (spatial) identities. From intervals to a historically layered conception of the interior, Brooker advances the notion of interiorscape (Brooker, 2017 ). Referring to the work of Katsuhiro Miyamoto, Brooker observes the blend between old and new structures, an amalgamation that the adaptation of old buildings requires. An intermediate space set within existing fragile structures can generate a novel spatial context. The interiorscape is a design approach that combines structures in order to show the present as built between the layers of the past but also in order to represent history as a layered space.

In regard to the art historical approach, this collection introduces a case study of modernist interiors. Campens ( 2017 ) addresses the architecture of the Belgian architect Juliaan Lampens and raises a fundamental question concerning the relationship between the prescriptive ways of living that modernist interiors presuppose and their necessary adaptability to new conditions. Binstock ( 2017 ) is the Vermeer specialist and Vermeer is the interior painter par excellence. His essay addresses Vermeer’s interiors as affective dimensions of interiority: melancholy, love, worry, attention and reflection are figured in these implicitly constructivist approach of the Dutch 17th century painter. The art of looking depends on the art of spatial arrangements and temporary states of mind are indistinguishable from an adaptable studio. Bauer’s contribution addresses a common isotopy in modern literature, namely the common ground that emerges between characters and their surrounding environment (Bauer, 2017 ). Concentrating on Balzac’s novel Colonel Chabert ( 2012 ), Bauer shows how the interior becomes a scenography for the experience of historical time: houses bear a physiognomy and in The Cabinet of Antiquities ( 1987 ) objects and people blend into a tableau. Shifting between media and ages, one can see how Vermeer’s clear depictions contrasts with Balzac’s grotesque vision of the human condition.

The interior becomes a figure of interiority

In conclusion, the interior coagulates architectonic space and turns into a readable place, a locally and temporally determinable dimension of meaning that generates specific movements, activities and roles. In this research context, the interior as interiority proposes a specific approach: instead of conceiving interior design strictly as the disposition of objects in space, the interior becomes a figure of interiority. The decorum of our lived space, its furniture, walls and roof, is significant because it is a representation of our subjectivity: how we live is a sign of how we think, feel and imagine the world. Relating the interior to interiority, interior design addresses a different challenge than that of comfortable spatial arrangements; it overcomes the reflection on interior space as a question of taste and decoration. The interior becomes an issue concerning representation: it is a model of our subjective life that in turn allows us to better understand the world we live in.

Ionescu V (ed) (2017) Interiorities: artistic, conceptual and historical reassessments of the interior (Article Collection). Palgrave Communications. https://www.nature.com/collections/kzvpjcgckf

Balzac H (1987) La vieille fille, Le cabinet des antiques. Flammarion, Paris

Balzac H (2012) Le Colonel Chabert. Librairie Générale Française, Paris

Bauer D (2016) Beyond the frame. Case studies. ASP Publishers, Brussels

Google Scholar  

Bauer D (2017) Interior spaces as traces in Balzac’s La Comédie humaine . Palgrave Commun 3:17043. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.43

Article   Google Scholar  

Benjamin W (1999) Arcades project. In: Eiland H, McLaughlin K (eds) The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Bernhard T (2010) Old Masters. Penguin, London

Binstock B (2017) Interiors and interiority in Vermeer: empiricism, subjectivity, modernism. Palgrave Commun 3:17068. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.68

Brooker G (2017) The interiorscape: amalgams and composites. Palgrave Commun 3:17057. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.57

Campens A (2017) The sociological dimension of concrete interiors during the 1960s. Palgrave Commun 3:17035. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.35

Chrétien JL (2014) L’espace intérieur. Les éditions de Minuit, Paris

Corboz A (2001) Le territoire comme palimpseste et autres essais, présenté par Sébatien Marot. Éditions de l’imprimeur, Basançon

Forino I (2017) The interno nell’interno: some furnishing paradigms for an interior as interiority. Palgrave Commun 3:17022. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.22

Fuss D (2004) The sense of an interior. Four writers and the rooms that shaped them. Routledge, New York

Gurlitt C (1888) Im Bürgerhause. Plaudereien über Kunst, Kunstgewerbe und Wohnungs-Ausstattung. Gilbersch’sche Königl. Hofverlagsbuchhandlung, Dresden

Hegewald J, Subrata M (2012) Re-use–The art and politics of integration and anxiet. Sage Publication, London

Hirth G (1886) Das deutsche Zimmer der Renaissance der Gothik und Renaissance, des Barock-, Rococo und Zopfstils, Dritte Stark Vermehrte Auflage. G. Hirth’s Verlag, München

Hollis E (2009) The house of life and the memory palace. Some thoughts on the historiography of interiors. Interiors 1(2010):105–117

Kant I (2000) Critique of the power of judgment. In: Guyer P, Matthews E (eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Lane BM (2007) Housing and dwelling. Perspectives on modern domestic architecture. Routledge, London

Machado R (1976) Towards a theory of remodelling: old buildings as palimpsest. Prog Arch 11(1976):46–49

Massey A (1997) Interior design, history and development. In: Banham J (ed) Encyclopaedia of interior design. Routledge, London, pp 609–612

Perec G (2008) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Penguin Books, London

Perec G (2010) An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. Wakefield Press, Adelaide

Perec G (2003) Penser/Classer. Seuil, Paris

Pile J, Gura J (2014) A history of modern design. Wiley, Hoboken

Pimlott M (2016) The public interior as idea and project. Jap Sam Books, Heijningen

Sparke P (2008) The modern interior. Reaktion Books, London

Raizman D (2003) History of modern design, graphics and products since the industrial revolution. Laurence King, London

Rice C (2007) The emergence of the interior. Architecture, modernity, domesticity. Routledge, London

Rosner V (2005) Modernism and the architecture of private life. Columbia University Press, New York

Smyth G, Croft J (2006) Our house. The representation of domestic space in modern culture. Rodopi, Amsterdam

Taylor M, Preston J (2006) Intimus. Interior design theory reader. Wiley Academy, Hoboken

Thompson JA, Blossom NH (2015) The handbook of interior design. Wiley Blackwell, West Sussex

Book   Google Scholar  

Trachtenberg M (2010) Building-in-time. From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion. Yale University Press, New Haven

Verschaffel B (2002) The meanings of domesticity. J Archit 7:287–296

Von Falke J (1866) Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks. Weigel, Leipzig

Weinthal L (2011) Toward a new interior. An anthology of interior design theory. Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Wambacq J, van Tuinen S (2017) Interiority in Sloterdijk and Deleuze. Palgrave Commun 3:17072. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.72

Woolf V (1924) Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown. The Hogarth Press, London

Verschaffel B (2017) The interior as architectural principle. Palgrave Commun 3:17038. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2017.38

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium

Vlad Ionescu

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vlad Ionescu .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The author declares no competing financial interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Ionescu, V. The interior as interiority. Palgrave Commun 4 , 33 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0088-6

Download citation

Received : 05 March 2018

Accepted : 06 March 2018

Published : 27 March 2018

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0088-6

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies