This text operates in two significant ways towards expanding an understanding about the interior: first, it recalls Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own and the important role it has played in inspiring women to claim space and authority over their own domain. Secondly, through the use of close and gentle observation, it positions intimate detail and temporality in the discourse of interior design as a creative act. Speaking directly to the question of interior design needing a room apart from architecture, this paper reflects upon the dualisms that might hamper interior design’s liberation, naming it as a physical and psychological refuge – a space within and yet with physical atmosphere