Imagine a house where the walls change colour depending on your mood, or your tablecloth changes shape when you’re having a dinner party. A house where every item, from your cushions to your lampshades, interact with you. This might sound like something out of Harry Potter, but such magic interior design could become a real part of our lives in the near future.

Many homes are already smart. Research from Statista predicts that by the end of 2019, more than 45m smart home devices will be installed in US homes, and analysts predict that the smart home devices industry will reach US$107.4 billion by 2023 globally. One in four people in Britain own one or more smart home devices, such as smart speakers, thermostats and smart security, and the UK government has begun investing money in teaching elderly and disabled people how to use smart tech in their homes.

But our view of smart homes tends to veer more on the side of sci-fi than cosiness. Most of us are likely to imagine our homes of the future as having clear glass walls and gadgets that anticipate our every need. A house where Alexa rules the roost. But what if the future smart home was more than gadgets, wires, and flashing lights? What if instead, we used technology to make the existing spaces around us more beautiful?

I see a near future when technology is literally woven into the fabric of everyday objects, when interiors will be designed as interactive, and decorative objects will no longer be static. Technology can be more than a tool to help us become more productive or make our lives easier. It can enhance the spaces we live in. I call this blend between interior design and interaction design “interioraction”.