ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the early history of instructional interior decorating on television in the 1940s and 1950s through the television career of interior designer Paul MacAlister. Utilizing his Plan-a-Room kit of miniature furniture, MacAlister devised techniques to demonstrate professional interior decorating on the air. While his first shows aired locally in New York and then Chicago, he reached national audiences with NBC’s daytime show HOME. Television had become another platform for promoting professional interior decoration, with programming geared towards a female homemaker audience of do-it-yourself decorators.
