Current State: Interior Trends

2020 is no ordinary year and given the state of the world, it’s no wonder so many of us are turning to our interiors as a main source of happiness. From the ‘nude’ trend (not the same as neutral FYI) to textured everything, here’s a quick breakdown of some of the best interior trends dominating the culture right now. 

Decorative Plates Are Making Their Way Into The Kitchen

If you want to give your home instant luxury then decorative plates are the way to go. They’ve long been a feature of high-end interiors, but there’s no need to spend a fortune on the antique variety. Today, you can get porcelain printed with modernist designs that evoke freshness, strength and permanence. 

Decorative plates can go pretty much anywhere in your home. But the kitchen is the natural place to display the majority of your collection. You can either use plastic plate mounts to display them - great if you have one or two you want to put on the sideboard. Or you can cut a groove into a shelving unit and then use that to hold the plates in the upright position. Pine bordered shelving units work particularly well here since the neutrality of the wood complements the chinaware. 

If you have the right attachments, you can also hang decorative plates on your walls. Just be careful though that you don’t back into them. It’s a risk. 

Walls that Come To Life

Given the rise of eco-friendly designs, it should come as no surprise that we’re now seeing the emergence of living walls. The basic idea here is to let wildlife do the talking, allowing nature to flourish indoors while keeping everything stylish. 

Living walls are great for patios, terraces and balconies. We’ve already seen the hospitality industry deploy them to perfection. And now with spending copious amounts of time indoors for the foreseeable future, there’s an even bigger move in the design community to bring them into urban homes. 

Inner-city dwellers are lapping up this trend. Green walls help to bring nature to places where it was absent before. They prove that gardens don’t have to be horizontal. They can be vertical too. If you can’t grow outwards, you can plant upwards instead. 

Installing these walls is usually pretty simple. You don’t have to replace any of your exterior walls. Instead, you place a kind of vertical soil bed up against them and then seed it with the plants you want to grow. Usually, vendors get the wall started in the horizontal position. Then you place it somewhere on your exterior in the vertical position so that it receives a daily dose of sunshine. And that’s it. You’re ready to rock and roll. 

Velvet Upholstery

via pinterest

If you want to increase the value of your property, then including velvet elements could be just what you need. Velvet searches on Google have gone up nearly five times during the pandemic. The fabric has never been more popular, as people look for ways to include it in their interiors. Beds and sofas that contain the material are selling like hotcakes to homeowners who want to achieve the pinnacle of style and sophistication in their interiors. 

The Rise Of Mermaid Tiles In Showers

photo via pinterest

People are always looking for ways to get cash out of their homes in 2020. One way to do this is to use a mortgage broker, like Altrua Financial, to provide the best mortgage rates and release equity. 

The idea here is to free up cash. But when you release equity, you’d prefer to do it using the value you’ve added to your property since you bought it. That way, you do not actually have to dip into your savings. Updating a bathroom can give you that extra wiggle room you need. 

One of the best ways to upgrade your showers is to use mermaid tiles. These fan-shaped tiles that tessellate with each other across bathroom walls and shower cubicles look fantastic, and they’re bang-on-trend right now. Buyers are definitely willing to pay more for a stylish bathroom that’s designed and ready to go.

Nude Staircases

photo: Gerstner 

“Nude” is slightly different from neutral. The idea is to show the raw material underneath the paint, instead of displaying the color itself. 

However it’s important to be thoughtful when using nude. It’s easy for an interior to look unfinished when you deliberately neglect to paint surfaces. So the technique usually works best in relatively spartan interiors that make use of natural materials, ideally with sleek finishes to tie it all together.

Cantilever nude staircases that expose each step are ideal here. You simply insert steps into a wall and then leave the stone or wood untreated and unfinished. Then add a simple railing, and you’re ready to go. 

More generally, you can achieve a nude look by using raw tiles, wool, wood and hemp fibers. 

Enhanced Pile Furniture

The love affair with heavyweight textiles got off to a flying start in 2019. In 2020, designers are taking their ideas to the next level by creating interior pieces that look as though they’re all fabric and nothing else. 

Deep pile has been around as a concept for a long time. But it is only recently we’ve seen it develop into a bona fide trend. People want wool and linen blends to create an almost medieval feel in their interiors, but one that evokes a sense of comfort and novelty. Deep-pile chairs have vastly thicker upholstery and a fleece-like feel. So too do curtains in the same style - though this is a particularly brave style choice. You have to have confidence in implementing it in your home. 

Arches In The Hallway And Living Room

Arches have been a feature of architectural design for over a thousand years. But in recent months, they’ve become more important in homes. People love them in their hallways and living rooms to help with the transition between rooms. 

Importantly, they don’t have to be a structural element of your rooms. If you don’t have built-in arches in your home, you can tack them on in other ways. People, for instance, are now using them in their bed headboards and doorways (with the arch built above the rounded top of the door). 

Making Do With What You Have

In some ways, 2020 is a bit of a disaster. It may easily be remembered as the year in which the economy started to fall to pieces. It’s also likely to be remembered as the year of “make do and mend.” With upcycling taking off in a big way, people are simply taking old items and enhancing them. We also see the rise of weaving, with people stitching their own decorations and putting them on their walls. The same goes for shelving units and other domestic projects.