Comfort Zone

The hottest furniture designs for 2018 celebrate rest and quiet, rounder and softer shapes, and soothing and cocooning pieces. Get ready to hibernate.

At Paris Design Week this September, the theme for the influential design show Maison et Objet was “comfort zone,” a response to the “discomfort zones of an unstable and insecure world,” says show coordinator Marie-Jo Malait. It’s a theme that’s influenced furniture design for 2018, with rounder, softer shapes, and soothing, cocooning pieces that, more than ever, make home a sanctuary.

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

Emerald is going to be strong this year (see “Green Piece, page 44), and comfort also looks to greenery as sanctuary: “Greenhouse homes and passive houses are just waiting to be filled with a glorious Eden,” says Malait. Lush garden and jungle motifs are in, like de Gournay’s Rousseau wallpaper with its flora and fauna inspired by the 19th- century French artist Henri Rousseau. Designer Christian Lacroix brings this to full Edenic glory with his screen for the Roche-Bobois Nouveaux Classiques Collection (left). Paired with the bursting petals of the Bloom lounge chair by Kenneth Cobonpue (below), it’s an at-home arboretum and indoor idyll.

Maison Lacroix screen from the Nouveaux Classiques Collection by Roche- Bobois, $13,170, roche-bobois.com; Bloom lounge chair by Kenneth Cobonpue, $4,875, bloom furniturestudio.com

MARBLE WORKS

Part of the back- to- bolder and more- melancholic trends, marble is making a resurgence. And at NYCxDesign 2017, statement pieces like Allied Maker’s carved- alabaster light totem and Marie-Victoire Winckler’s marble vases heralded the comeback of stone. Another such monolith, the Ilary side table by Jean- Marie Massaud for Poltrona Frau (below), is sculpted entirely from marble.

Ilary side table by JeanMarie Massaud for Poltrona Frau, $9,360, livingspace.com

GREEN PIECE

If 2017 was in the pink (with pale “millennial pink” still holding strong), 2018 is all emerald, going even deeper and more exotic than Pantone’s 2017 colour of the year, Greenery. As reported by the New York Times at Salone del Mobile, green was “everywhere, but in a darker and richer tone that is closer to emerald” and was a nod to another time, or “echo of Deco.” Here, get back to viridian nature by treading atop the Sea Floor Mud rug by Zoë Luyendijk (bottom).

Sea Floor Mud rug by Zoë Luyendijk, $24,550, salari.com

TOUCH TONE

The comfort quotient continues with tactile, textural elements: deeppile carpet, wool and velvet materials, tufted and quilted patterns. There’s even seating composed of stuffed animals, which “clearly betrays our need for nesting,” says François Bernard, scenographer for Maison et Objet. “Nowadays, a comfortable chair should be a sort of anti-shock pod. We like to nestle in folds of fabric as thick as duvets. The ideal chair is basically a cushion propped up on four legs!” Ikea’s PS 2017 corner easy chair offers a rather literal take made of pillows—18 of them.

PS 2017 corner chair, $274, ikea.ca

ENJOY THE SILENCE

Comfort also translates into a simplicity of design and a luxurious minimalism in furniture that cocoons and wraps to invite reflection and meditation. Soft, giving sofas and enveloping chairs are upholstered in heavier fabrics like velvet or wool, which absorb sound. Winged chairs like the Hideout lounge chair by Swedish design trio Front create a place for intimate reverie.

Hideout lounge chair by Front, from $6,130, informinteriors.com