Decorating & Design
2024 Design Trends: The Decorating Elements Making Waves This Year
Updated on March 18, 2024
Seeking ideas for your next design project? Our 2024 design trends can help with great ideas for paint, lighting design, textiles and beyond. Discover the color that’s back, the It light fixture we’re loving and the sofa style that Gwyneth Paltrow approves.
Scroll down for H&H’s 2024 design trends!
No. 1: Ripples, Ruffles & Pleats
Clean, unadorned lines have dominated for decades but, with traditional decorating on the rise, all sorts of frills and flounces are back in rotation. From folded fabric to pleated lampshades and ruffled pillows to wicker and fabric shaped into undulating waves, we can’t get enough of this whimsical world.
Two Anders lights sculpted out of undulating layers of fibre top off a dining room by designer Shauna Walton.
In this powder room by Zoe Feldman Design, a rippled rattan-framed mirror makes a statement.
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No. 2: Color Drenching
Enveloping color in a single hue on walls, doors, baseboards, window trim and even ceilings delivers maximum impact. While this trend has been favored by British designers for years, a return to color-soaked interiors has us reaching for our paintbrush.
Sky blue on the walls, panelling, trim and ceiling creates a cohesive ambience in this hallway.
Farrow & Ball’s Red Earth extends from the baseboards, up the walls and across the ceiling.
No. 3: High-Contrast Wood Grain
An appetite for newness has designers pumping up the drama on wood grains. With dramatic, heavily veined marble reaching its saturation point, could this be the new go-to surface treatment?
A bed frame by Ettore Sottsass with emphasized wood grain dominates this bedroom designed by Dawid Konieczny.
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No. 4: The Return of Cool Metals
Are you ready for it? This year, we’ll start to see the re-emergence of metals such as stainless steel and chrome. These cooler metals have already started to infiltrate the marketplace, but we’re really seeing its presence in the home. Think swathes of kitchen cabinets and counters made from the material. This time around, it’s being paired with warm, textured stones that counterbalance the clinical effect.
Matte stainless steel cabinets bring an edge to veiny marble.
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No. 5: Built-in Sofas
This trend began picking up speed last year when we spotted it in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Montecito dream house, and it’s not going anywhere. Regularly seen in
mid-century modern homes, today’s built-in sofas often have sweeping curves and come in eye-catching upholstery fabrics. With formality on the decline and laid-back luxury on the rise, these custom creations are the ultimate lounge-around sofa.
The custom sofa in Gwyneth Paltrow’s California home.
A built-in sectional upholstered in mossy green velvet wraps around a room by Jessica Helgerson Interior Design.
No. 6: ‘It’ Fabric: Tapestry
Massive antique tapestries have been taking over stylish homes for the past few years, but getting your hands on one can be tricky and expensive. Fabrics and wallpapers inspired by tapestries, such as Dedar’s Schwarzwald, deliver the same rich, verdant, centuries-old look and work on furniture and pillows, and everything in between.
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No. 7: Wood Ceilings
Designers know that playing with materials is where it’s at. Take the humble ceiling, for example. Whether it’s clad in panels or strips of natural wood, or accentuated with hefty beams to create a rustic ambience, this simple move can take a room from ho-hum to elevated.
The timber ceiling in this office library by And And And Studio brings warmth and texture.
No. 8: Blue is Back
A perennial favourite, blue has taken a backseat to its sister shade green in recent years. But a cool, grey-hued blue is back. Farrow & Ball’s De Nimes is a Dutch blue that perfectly suits this kitchen by designer Lauren Caron.
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Colin King, the überstylist known for his moody, neutral aesthetic, just collaborated with The Future Perfect on a line of furniture (see sofa above) in a delicate cornflower shade declaring, “Let the color era commence!”
Sherwin-Williams’ Upward and Benjamin Moore’s Blue Nova are the brands’ Colours of the Year, and designers are reaching for blue to decorate
every room, from kitchens to living rooms.
No. 9: Enclosed Showers
Shivering in an open shower or cleaning water spots off glass are things of the past. The shower has pushed into the wall to create a warm and cosy nook. Often lined with graphic tile, these more intimate showers are like personal hammams that promise to keep the steam in and the draft out.
Designer Nina Farmer lined the interior of this shower with checkered tile.
A curved archway punctuates the entrance of an enclosed shower by JHL Design.
No. 10: Soft Roman Blinds
Roman blinds have long been a staple of decorating, but the current trend is for a softer, more relaxed gather with sweeping folds rather than crisp, neat pleats. It’s a more romantic look in keeping with our current appetite for more decorated rooms.
Delicately gathered folds of fabric bring a gentleness to this window in a bedroom by designer Stefani Stein.
Stefani Stein applies a similar treatment to this roman blind.
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