The elaborate households of the prewar years were gone, replaced by informality and adaptability. Gone, too, was the conventional approach to furnishings as expensive and permanent status objects. New materials and technologies, many of which had been developed during wartime, helped to free design from tradition, allowing for increasingly abstract and sculptural aesthetics as well as lower prices for mass-produced objects.
The most marked changes occurred in America, Italy, Scandinavia, and Japan. A growing number of American firms such as the Herman Miller Furniture Company and Knoll International began to build a reputation for manufacturing and marketing well-designed, high-quality, inexpensive furniture made from new materials like fiberglass and plastics for the consumer market in the postwar years. In an effort to revive their depressed postwar economy, Italian designers made a self-conscious effort to establish themselves as leaders in the lucrative international marketplace for domestic design. While initially they looked to traditional forms or materials for inspiration, they also soon embraced new materials and technologies to produce radically innovative designs that expressed the optimistic spirit of high-style modernism. Scandinavian designers preferred to combine the traditional beauty of natural materials with advanced technology, giving their designs a warm and domestic yet modern quality. Japanese designers, obviously aware of contemporaneous developments in Western architecture and design, strove to create a balance between traditional Asian and international modern aesthetics, while still evoking national values with their distinctly Asian sensibility.