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In This Episode
- Want to share with us which trends in home decor you are seeing? Visit us on social media @archhappyhour or send us a message here
- Trends are a great way to refresh the energy, colors, and textures in your home
- Blend and combine trends for unique looks
- Choose elements that are easy to change and less expensive but offer big impact
It’s springtime and we are ready to freshen up our homes. In Episode 84 of The Architecture Happy Hour podcast, host and architect, Laura Davis shares her favorite trends in home decor.
Today we’re going to be talking about home decor as there are some really fun new trends coming along. You know this time of year when the weather gets warmer, we want to open up the windows and doors in our homes and kind of freshen things up. It’s a great time to also freshen up the energy and the color and the texture in your home just to make things a little more interesting and fun and prepare for the summer ahead.
So we’ve got four favorite trends that we’re going to talk with you about today. I think you’ll find them pretty interesting and if you want to check in with us on social media, I would love to hear from you. What are you seeing from your clients and from your area of the country? What are you seeing as far as trends go?
Before we get going on our topic today on trends in home decor, I wanted to thank our new sponsor, Renlita Custom Opening Solutions. Holly and I are really excited to have Renlita onboard with the podcast. What we’re really excited about is that Renlita is a custom door company that makes the coolest vertical opening doors that can be used inside as well as outside. If you’ve got big commercial projects, they’re fantastic for interior space management.
Or if you’re working on a restaurant project or really cool patio design, they’re perfect for opening up, creating amazing views for indoor-outdoor spaces. And one of the things that we really love about this company is that they are entirely custom. So Renlita’s people are really on the ball with working closely with architects and contractors to make sure that everything comes out perfectly. So go check out their website, Renlita USA, and see how they can help you on your next project.
Okay, so let’s get started talking about some home decor trends.
Trends in Home Decor – Natural Elements
The first trend that we’re seeing very strongly are natural elements. We deal with technology and machine-made things all day long from our smartphones to our crazy smart cars that have screens and all sorts of automated AI technology to detect things around us.
And at the end of the day, we just want to come home and relax and reconnect with nature and with something that is not machine-made. So really bringing in natural elements can help you really feel grounded and relaxed when you’re back at home. One thing we’re seeing is large print botanical and floral wallpapers. And fortunately, now you can even find these in peel and stick. So a lot of the options can actually be removable so you don’t have to commit to something big that is going to be a pain to get rid of later. I know we’ve all been through taking down wallpaper and it is not fun. So to have an option that will go up easily and come down easily. That’s a really fun option to sort of brighten up a room.
Another thing that we’re seeing in all sorts of places, even stores that you can walk into and get it off the shelf like Target or Home Goods or a place like that are wicker and rattan type occasional tables, side tables, coffee tables, and little accent pieces. They’re really kind of fun. They look a little bit tropical and especially if they have an open weave, then they’re going to bring a lot of air and movement into your room and a lot more texture and interest. And then if you want to just keep it simple, something like a natural woven basket would be really pretty. And then just fill it with some beautiful pillows or blankets in a nice chunky natural fiber that will remind you of something that’s very natural. Maybe an unbleached cotton or something like that. The other place that we’re seeing natural elements is in the finished materials that we’re choosing and selecting for our clients.
Many of those are available in tile or quartz countertops. Even a glass mosaic tile pattern can be found to look like water or in beachy sand color combinations. The technology now for printed porcelain tile is hugely advanced from where it was even just a couple of years ago. So now we have these amazing wood look tiles and tiles that look like marble and travertine and beautiful stones that are very, very affordable and really easy to get. And so if you need to retile a bathroom or kitchen backsplash tiles are a great way to bring in natural elements that are very low maintenance and you can enjoy them all year round.
Trends in Home Decor – Handmade
The next trend that we’re seeing is items that are handmade. If you work downtown or in a place where there’s a lot of traffic and congestion and you are surrounded by metal, glass and hard surfaces, it’s natural to crave the irregularity of handmade objects. There is a certain character to something that’s handmade that really is attractive and wonderful to come home to.
Artisan Light Fixtures
One thing we’re seeing in interior design and in-home design is artisan light fixtures. There are lots of examples online and in lighting showrooms that are a little bit unusual. They might resemble a crystal or a hand-blown glass globe or maybe the metal fittings that are holding the glass are handmade and hand-forged and it has a really unique, beautiful character to it. Another easy and inexpensive way is to look for a large – almost like a cable sweater type – texture. We mentioned that in our previous podcast on changing your bachelor pad to a family home – the kind of thick texture that you just know was made by hand by somebody and that there’s a story to it – something like that on your sofa or on your favorite chair can be really inviting.
And then one of my favorite handmade touches is tile. I love the look of a handmade tile and something that’s been hand-glazed. The unique character and irregularities to it are just really charming and beautiful and remind me of some of the travels that I’ve done to Europe.
Trends in Home Decor – Color
Our next trend that is really kind of exciting is all about color. And this really has a couple different facets to it. What we’re seeing is that there is a whole pallet of rich, bright, bold colors, very clear in color quality. Then on the other side, there’s a whole other palette of very soft and feminine colors. And then the third category that I would throw in there has to do with metallics. So we’re seeing our wonderful mix of metals. So first let’s talk about the rich colors.
What we’re seeing now is a trend, sort of a spin-off of the rose-gold that we’ve seen in the last year or two. Soft pinks, lavenders, and cream colors and pairing those with brushed metals and beautiful antique brass and things like that.
We are also seeing softer, more muted colors in wood floors and much more demand for lighter wood floors. We’re not seeing dark wood floors quite as much. And we’re also seeing more playfulness with the texture and character of the wood as well as the stain. The stains that we’re seeing are not super clear, we’re seeing the more milky or whitewashed stain or something with the touch of translucent gray. If you go into a flooring showroom, look at all of the engineered flooring options for wood, even the vinyl options for a wood-look floor. Fortunately, the manufacturers are giving us lots of different variety when it comes to a lighter wood.
Trends in Home Decor – Mixed Metals
And then the third component to the color trend was, as I mentioned, the mixed metals. So this is where you can really have some fun. It also gives you a little bit more flexibility if you’re doing a remodel, for example if you choose to go with a darker antique brass or bronze fixture or maybe it’s the handles on the cabinet, you don’t have to necessarily change out the light fixture or maybe the faucets in the shower because this mixed metal idea is that it’s okay to mix your coppers with your chromes and your brasses. And it’s kind of a fun element to play with. So look for opportunities to bring some metallic touches into your room and that will help liven it up just a little bit and bring a little bit of shine into your room.
Trends in Home Decor – Geometric
And then finally, something that I’m sure you all have seen is the geometric trend. We are seeing this in almost every kind of material that we encounter when we’re putting together projects. Most notable are the geometric and printed pattern tiles. There are so many fabulous options out there, that you can get mosaics that are very strong in geometrics. You can get printed handmade tiles or tiles with wonderful monochromatic patterns or beautiful color combinations. For example, in a kitchen, we’re seeing a lot more instances of backsplashes that go all the way to the ceiling. So rather than having a built-in hood, a lot of times we’ll see a more slender vent hood that shows the wall behind it and then that tile will go all the way up to the ceiling to really show off more of that tile pattern.
Open shelves have been around for the last few years as a trend and I thought they were fading a little bit in the last year or two but with this growing trend of geometric, we are seeing those open shelves stick around because they give you a great chance to show off more of that pattern. You can do a mosaic just about anywhere, like a kitchen backslash, a floor, a shower floor, a shower accent wall, even a small space like the shampoo shelf in a shower wall.
You could just do a little inset of something really special or maybe it’s just a six-inch backsplash across the back of the vanity and then you cap it with a little pencil mold or something like that. That way you get a touch of the geometric trend using a really beautiful stone or glass mosaic without breaking the budget. If you would like to play with the geometric trend, you can do it with furniture or you can do it in artwork. There are some wonderful examples in wallpaper. And so for example, you could wallpaper just the back wall behind a built in desk and that could be just enough of that geometric pattern to bring interest and create something special on that wall, but you don’t have to do the entire room. You could even hang an antique rug if you want to show it off. That could be a great way to bring the impact of geometric patterns to your room and it is also a great way to work in the color trend.
So you can bring in some of those bright colors that are going to liven up a room and bring some real interest. You could combine trends, for example with a handwoven rug, you could do the handmade trend, as well as the color and geometric trends. And then if it’s made of something really textural and natural, like a sisal or wool that has that natural element to it. That’s a home run! You’ve hit all the trends, right?
So there’s really a lot of ways to play with these four different categories. And I know there’s probably more, but these were the four that really caught my attention and I thought they really offered such a fun and broad way to bring in a little bit of new energy and interests to our room.
Thank you to our sponsor!
Renlita Custom Opening Solutions offers custom, vertical, operable openings. Check out their website at www.renlitausa.com.
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Laura Davis is a registered architect and interior designer in the state of Texas and Colorado, and a founding member of hpd architecture + interiors. Laura's extensive experience includes residential as well as commercial and retail projects. She also has a particular interest in restoration, holding a certificate in Historic Preservation. She is energized by the character of older homes and the stories of those who have lived there. Responding to the needs of the current owner, while also honoring the personality of the original home is a delicate process to be enjoyed.