This article follows the development of the views and requirements for the indoor environmental quality in buildings throughout the course of the history of architecture. How is the quality of the indoor environment in architecture as a whole perceived by contemporary architects and experts? One of the primary reasons for building was to create a space “inside”, protected from the surrounding world. The importance of the indoor environmental quality in buildings has already been recognized and described by Vitruvius in the first century BC. Yet only in the first half of the twentieth century, the requirements for the individual aspects of the indoor environment (thermal technology, indoor air quality, lighting and acoustics) were established accurately. These indoor environmental quality requirements are currently ingrained in standards and legislation, and for most of them compliance with the set values is required by law. The quality of indoor environment in buildings gained importance especially at the end of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, when the developed world population spends more than 90 percent of the time inside. Epidemiological studies from the 1990s explored the causes of the so-called Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) and the link between the indoor environment in buildings and the health of its inhabitants. The perception of the indoor environment is shifting from the optimisation of individual parameters to a holistic approach, with emphasis not only on the connections between individual aspects of the indoor environment, but also on their relationship to the architectural qualities of the built environment