Arts & Crafts / Prairie SchoolInteriors
Prairie House Interiors
Prairie School interiors are of a piece with the exterior style. Horizontal emphasis, grouped windows (often with art glass), and integrated architecture continue inside. Seating, storage, and lighting is often built into the architecture of rooms. Surfaces are generally plain (not covered with paper) and color schemes are neutral, monochromatic, or analogous (i.e., coral, orange, persimmon, or blue-greens with greenish blues). Prairie-style motifs found their way into builder’s houses, including foursquares and bungalows, usually in the form of ceiling beams and horizontal woodwork, lighting, and furniture.
Prairie School houses introduced innovations that became conventions in later building. Examples include raised hearths, lowered ceilings and level changes within the house, built-in furniture, indirect lighting, open floor plans, and the kitchen as an extension of living area. These modern houses truly changed the 20th-century domestic interior, through the 1950s and until today.
