A state room is one of the principal formal rooms of a palace or great country house, designed for receiving and entertaining distinguished guests, sometimes including royalty. State rooms were furnished with the finest furniture, textiles, paintings and decoration the owner could afford and were intended to display wealth, rank and taste.
In English houses of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, state rooms were often arranged as a state apartment, a sequence of increasingly private rooms laid out in an enfilade, with doors aligned so that a guest could see through the whole suite. A typical arrangement led from a great hall or saloon through a drawing room and antechamber to the state bedroom, with a closet beyond. Furnishings included carved and gilded side tables, pier glasses, suites of upholstered chairs, silk damask wall hangings and magnificent state beds. Houses such as Chatsworth and Blenheim preserve outstanding examples. Furniture with a history of use in state rooms carries considerable prestige, and documented country-house provenance can greatly enhance value. The term is also used more loosely today for any grand reception room.
