HOME STYLE
Dark, rich, textured, aged brass, blingy gold, minimal, over-the-top, velvet, greys, blacks, navy, burgundies, sage, earthy, natural. And really, that’s all you need to know about the trends for this autumn! What a pick and mix – the longer I work in interior design, the more the whole trend thing flummoxes me.
What on earth are we meant to do with this contradictory fast-moving set of developments in the interiors world? It moves as quickly as fashion does and very few of us change our interiors, or even update details, that often. And nor should we – environmental concerns are, for me, underpinned by a Yorkshire sensibility that wants value for money, long lasting quality, as well as a comfort in the familiar. And yet these trends are real, worked out in great detail and with much reading of tea leaves as well as statistical analysis by some very highly paid forecasters.
Companies spend large sums buying this data in order to get their merchandising right. So it directly affects what is in the shops.
If you are refurbing or updating or starting from scratch, what is in the shops now is important. You may not be interested in what’s in fashion for interiors, but it will govern what choices you have. It also gives you some ideas for moving around what you have.
If you’re interested in interiors, spending a little time getting ideas from what’s trending and seeing how your things work in a different light or juxtaposition is a relaxing way to spend a bit of downtime. It can give a great deal of pleasure when you find a new way of displaying or using a wellloved object or piece of furniture.
Being a magpie, I have far too many items I love and I do put some away for a few months and have the pleasure anew when I bring them out again – ‘curating’ your possessions (don’t get me started… how wonderfully pretentious is that?!).
And being in fashion is fun too – none of us want to be seen as old fashioned. Though a good way of pulling it off is to tell everyone your interiors are postmodern ironic…
There’s a bit of me that worries about the circular argument of trend forecasting – the forecasters say it will be so, so the retailers stock it, so we buy it, so the forecasters must be right, so we’ll listen to them next time and reinforce their power! But changes in society, our contemporary obsessions and anxieties all affect how we use and style out homes, and it is this that good trend forecasters tap into, plus that nose – impossible to define or replicate – for sniffing out the zeitgeist. It’s hard to dismiss it entirely with a cynical shrug.
How to make sense of the autumn trends?
For me, one that stands high and proud is the move to rich and dark colours. I think this is a great trend for interiors in this country: so many of us live in dark and small houses, there is something wonderful about embracing that and making these spaces dramatic and rich and mysterious.
You can add rich pattern or gold metallics to give the space zing, and use low level lighting to create pools of light to pull you into the space. Just make sure you use LED light bulbs to keep the fuel bill as low as possible, as the lights will be on more often than not in this look!
The other trend I love is almost its exact opposite – it’s light and minimal, a sort of Japanese-Scandi movement.
In its purest form, texture and colour are low – matte black, smooth pebble-like finishes.
It’s a beautiful but difficult look to pull off – everything needs to have perfect finish (and yes you need to be fanatically tidy).
A more comfortable way to deliver this look is to add texture – woven baskets, velvets, still a really big trend this autumn, big chunky knits.
Keep the colours neutral and the spaces between furniture as expansive as possible, and have very few accessories around, and treat them all as works of art. And indeed many of them are.