Trend forecasting used to be easy. In the analogue past experts in this field would, for a fee, supply the fashion and interiors industries with an overview of colours and moods. Chintz was out and orange was the new black only for green to become the new black the following season. In the multi-channel land we now inhabit trends are often over before you finish scrolling. But now consumers are waking up to the fact that while there are definite underlying trends that are cyclical – the aforementioned chintz, for example, is back in favour – a new sense of independence is also creeping in. Consumers want homes that are imbued with more personality and feed all of the five senses.
Here’s 10 ways to make updating your home easy.
1 Tactile pleasures
Touch is one of the five senses and textiles bring sensory pleasure to a space. Having covered every surface from carpets to beds, we have reached peak velvet. While delicious it will be taking a back seat this season, in favour of boucle, a looped yarn that brings an additional dimension to seating. It’s not new. When architect Florence Knoll asked Eero Saarinen in the 1940s to create a seat you could really curl up in, his response was to upholster his Womb chair in the soft wool. In the 1950s Chanel used it to soften her tweed suiting.
High-end decorators, like this Hong Kong project by Champalimaud Design, favour báinín, a hard-to-keep soft white that looks gorgeous in adult-only spaces. You can order it from Julianne Kelly Interiors, whose entry-level polyester option comes in 15 different colourways and costs €89 per metre. Murphy Sheehy's Zumirez, from Zinc Textile's Beach book, is a wool-cotton blend that feels teddy-bear tactile and costs €191.50 pm.
champalimaud.design;juliannekellyinteriors.ie; murphysheehy.com
2 Weaving magic
Wall hangings have woven their way back into our homes. The colours of this Fuli rug, which recently formed part of the firm's stand at Design Shanghai, really pop when mounted on a ply base. On beds, Co Wexford-based Ceadogán rug makers' Le Chéile collection of very textured headboards offer a fresh way to work their existing floor designs into other parts of the home. A king-size will cost from about €1,650.
ceadogan.ie; designshanghai.com; fulicarpet.com
3 Showrooms that engage
Now that we can move freely again, showroom visits where you can see, feel, touch the furniture, kitchen, bathrooms or lighting on display, really help buyers make decisions. The addition of Porcelanosa kitchens to Tilestyle’s offer turns it into a veritable one-stop home shop. The slick range starts from €18,000, for a 4-metre long design with a 2.4sq m island and is inclusive of appliances and worktops. All showroom models are demo-ready so you can see and hear how noisy appliances might be before you buy.
This level of engagement is also evident at newly opened Nordic Elements in Blackrock where, by virtue of the addition of a coffee dock, you’re encouraged to browse. You can test out its Montana stools, admire the Mazo furniture, DK3 shelving and classics like Verpan lighting’s Pantop 023 (€275), while sipping a latte.
In Carrick-on-Suir, Aoki Interiors recently traded up to a two-storey premises on Kickham Street with a media centre upstairs where they can show interactive CAD drawings of refurbishment plans on a large screen or projector while continuing to sell clever window dressing and seating solutions from the ground floor.
tilestyle.ie; nordicelements.com; aokiinteriors.ie
4 Departmentalisation
Arnotts has reinvented its furniture floor with a slew of new international brands and dynamic home-grown Irish names, like Celbridge-based garden centre The Orchard, which popped-up over the summer, and independent outfit Pieces. The latter's mix of more affordable prices and fashion-forward forms is drawing a big new crowd. This Bau desk, €399, with either an oak or walnut veneer top (140cm by 70cm), will also work as a hall or console table.
arnotts.ie; pieces.ie
5 Neutral Territory
A neutral interior, with lots of white walls, bare blonde timber and light gives you a crisp base on which you can build any number of layers. London designer Lee Broom knows the power of this less-is-more approach. With his new Penthouse collection he's shifted his focus from lighting to return his attentions to furniture and accessories. Musico is a glass-topped pedestal dining table, about €6,975, and matching chairs, from about €1,026 each (excluding delivery).
leebroom.com
6 Roll with it
By George it's finally time to say goodbye to mid-century modernism and hello to Regency, the Georgian period's finest furniture moment. Blame the TV show Bridgerton for our new-found lust for all things of the era. London-based Sedilia's new Roll Top sofa riffs on the classic seat style from this period in a very discreet way that also takes note of the new curves coming into sofa design. It offers cocooning comfort with prices for the chair starting from €8,347 and the sofa from €12,191 (excluding delivery).
sedilia.com
7 Names in lights
If you’re in the market for new lighting then notable Irish names include London-based Laura Quinn Design who is already on the radar of Brown Thomas’s buyers for her hobnail boot lamp that was part of Create, the department store’s annual Irish design showcase.
Tonntracha, a new wave-inspired chandelier, from €7,000, is made from sculpted shards of glass fitted onto laser-cut acrylic, so parts can easily be replaced. It is 160cm wide with a depth of 35cm.
Design duo Roisin O'Reilly and Chloe Stevens's The Lightworks glass and resin steel-frame pendants on pastel shades look like they've been sugar-coated. Its double-tiered designs start from €1,250 for a 50cm diameter size while Spain-based Ray Power, who already collaborates with LZF, has launched illuminated wood-veneer sconces and pendants. The lighting is available to order through Kilkenny-based Willie Duggan Lighting.
lauraquinndesign.com; thelightworks.ie; raypowerdesign.bigcartel.com; lzf-lamps.com; willieduggan.com
8 Waste not
Some trends require making changes to the way we live. We're all trying to reduce food waste and hygiene is also front and centre in this Covid era. We don't want to have food sitting in bins and Food Cycler is a closed way to reduce these concerns. Its clever pulverizing and dehydrating reduces the weight and volume of the discarded food to create sterile, odourless and nutrient-rich blocks that you can use on plants in the garden. It costs about €450 through UK-based Sage Appliances.
sageappliances.com
9 Clean lines
Kitchen design has become an integral part of the look and feel of the home with extractor hoods that dominate the roomscape being phased out in favour of under-counter models to give a sleek new look. Elica’s Nicola Tesla One is a smart option that you can install as part of a new look or retrofit into an existing space. It gives you an extraction hood and induction hob in one box that will require as much below-counter depth as a standard sink to fit flush with the counter. This does mean you’ll have to rework the cabinet below and change the existing countertop.
Its filter has been designed for reuse by simple hand-washing. It comes in a basic black option, from €1,899 or an Aspirazone version that will recalibrate extraction levels without you having to touch a button. It costs from €2,999, from Harvey Norman and can also be ordered in a swanky white glass option.
elica.com; harveynorman.com
10 Darker side
If you spend all your free time inhabiting social media then you will already be across Japandia, a fusion of Scandinavian chic and Japanese aesthetic, that really is just a fresh way of selling all that is Nordic. You’re probably also aware of cottagecore, which focuses on all things rustic.
Goblincore is the latest to garner attention spans. This is a worship of nature's darker side and advocates the use of frogs, toads and toadstool motifs. None should be taken too seriously but it does offer inspiration for a bit of lateral thinking – a themed supper, for example. Invite friends round and serve them up a bowl of pasta served with fresh fungi such as these pictured here on an acacia serving board, 21cm by 32cm, €10.50, from Sostrene Grene.
sostrenegrene.com
