Over the past many decades, what is now called residential interior design was known as “good taste” in home decoration.

Good taste was the gold standard of the upper socioeconomic class to which the rest of the population should aspire.

Such was an unwritten law.

The emphasis was on formality, etiquette, breeding, past period designs, traditions, and the personal home furnishings and lifestyle choices of those who proclaimed these standards.

These standards were of ultimate importance and determined hierarchy in society.

Based on this rigid expression of desired beauty standards, certain things, or expressions, did not “go together” in good taste. Comfort, personal likes, convenience, and logic were not players on this stage of life.

People not adhering to this standard were considered to be lower class.

Changes, advances, discoveries, sources and types of financial status, incomes, communication, education, politics, entertainment, and the arts brought about a different, advanced, freer, less rigid, logical, and more personal status of life on this planet.

Changes constantly continue in the flow of life.

In many current designed residential interiors, there is an almost total disregard for adherence to aesthetic principles, definitions, and the quality level of beauty.

Today, the qualification for the beauty of these designs is what individuals like, what’s comfortable, and what’s uniquely personal.

The highest levels of quality aesthetics are becoming more dissolved to express individual taste.

Anything goes if one likes it.

While individual personal expressions are good, healthy, and desirable, somewhere along the way, have we not strayed from what took us to the highest quality experience bar of beauty that can be known?

What is beauty, for designed residential interiors, and what is its priority and role in the current drama of life played on this planet?

Food for thought.