Inigo Jones and the first English classical interiors

Inigo Jones (1573–1652) brought true classical architecture to England. Before him, English builders borrowed columns and ornament from pattern books and scattered them across Tudor and Jacobean houses. Jones went to Italy, studied Roman ruins and the buildings of Andrea Palladio at first hand, and came home to design rooms governed by proportion, the classical orders and calm, ordered ceilings.

His two great surviving works, the Queen's House at Greenwich and the Banqueting House in Whitehall, are both open to visitors. Together they are the starting point for nearly every classical interior that followed in Britain, from the Georgian drawing room to the plaster ceiling rose in a Victorian terrace.

From masques to the King's Works

Jones began as a designer of court masques, the lavish entertainments staged for James I and his queen, Anne of Denmark. He worked with the playwright Ben Jonson for about fifteen years, and the two often quarrelled over whether words or spectacle mattered more. Jones called masques "nothing but pictures with light and motion". That stage training taught him how light, perspective and a single strong axis could transform a space.

In 1613 he toured Italy with the Earl of Arundel, the great collector, and in 1615 he became Surveyor of the King's Works. He read architecture closely and wrote in the margins of his books. Worcester College, Oxford, holds the largest surviving part of his library, 46 volumes, many annotated in his hand, including his copy of Palladio's Quattro libri dell'architettura.

The Queen's House, Greenwich

Anne of Denmark commissioned the Queen's House in 1616. Work stopped in 1618 and she died the following year. It resumed in 1629 for Charles I's queen, Henrietta Maria, and the house was complete by 1635. It is often described as England's first classical building: a crisp white block with no gables, no turrets and no Gothic tracery.

Inside, the Great Hall is a perfect cube, 40 feet in every direction. Its ceiling once held paintings by Orazio Gentileschi, removed in 1708 and now at Marlborough House. Off the hall rises the Tulip Stairs, described as Britain's first geometric, unsupported spiral stair. Each stone tread is cantilevered from the wall and rests on the step below.

The Banqueting House and its Rubens ceiling

A fire destroyed the old banqueting house at Whitehall in January 1619. Jones's replacement was finished in 1622. The main hall is a double cube, about 110 feet long and 55 feet wide and high. Outside, the lower windows carry alternating triangular and segmental pediments, a Palladian rhythm that London had never seen.

The ceiling is divided into a grid of deep compartments. In 1636 nine canvases by Peter Paul Rubens were installed there, commissioned by Charles I to celebrate his father, James I: uniting the crowns of England and Scotland, ruling wisely like Solomon, and rising to heaven. Thirteen years later, on 30 January 1649, Charles was executed on a scaffold built outside the same building.

Jones did not cover rooms in ornament. He proportioned them, then let the ceiling do the talking.

What Jones took from Palladio

As a designer, I find it useful to boil Jones's method down to a few rules. They still work in an ordinary house.

• Proportion first. The cube and the double cube give rooms a settled, balanced feel before any decoration is added.
• The orders used correctly. Columns, pilasters and cornices follow Roman rules rather than being applied as random trimmings.
• A centred ceiling. The ceiling is organised around a clear centre and a regular pattern of panels.
• Pediments with purpose. Doors and windows are framed by pediments that mark them as important. I trace this back further in Palladio and the pediment.

Wilton and the double cube room

The most famous classical room of the period is the Double Cube Room at Wilton House, near Salisbury, seat of the Earls of Pembroke. It measures 60 feet long, 30 feet wide and 30 feet high, and was designed to frame the family's portraits by Anthony van Dyck. It was created after fire damaged the new south wing in the late 1640s and is usually attributed to Inigo Jones and John Webb, his assistant and nephew by marriage, around the early 1650s. Jones died in 1652, and how much of the final scheme is his own and how much is Webb's is still debated.

Jones's influence also shaped London streets. At Covent Garden he laid out what is often called the first regularly planned square in London for the Earl of Bedford, with the church of St Paul's (1631–1637) on its west side. Nearby, his Queen's Chapel at St James's (1623–1627) survives as well.

Bringing Jones home

You do not need a palace to borrow his ideas. Find the true centre of your ceiling and give it a single, generous ceiling rose sized to the room. Keep the cornice, rose and door surrounds in the same classical language. Frame your main door with a modest overdoor so it reads as the room's entrance rather than a gap in the wall.

Our Heritage & Classical collection gathers hand-cast pieces in this spirit, made to order in Shrewsbury and supplied in natural plaster to paint with ordinary emulsion. For help choosing a rose, see all ceiling roses and our guide on how to choose a ceiling rose size.