You blinked, and now you’re halfway through 2019 — which means searching for 2019 furniture trends is a waste of your time. Blogs about the hot materials, colors, shapes and styles are on the verge of outdated as designers start ignoring this year’s hottest trends in favor of focusing on next year’s collections. If you consider yourself a trendsetter, you need to look ahead at what furniture will be in fashion in 2020 — and we have some predictions to help you prepare.
Authenticity
In people, authenticity is difficult to define — but in furniture, authenticity is a fairly simple concept: using materials that are unapologetically themselves. For instance, plastic should look and act like plastic; wood should look like wood, and metal should be metal, not pretending to be something else. It’s common, especially among low-cost furniture, to disguise a material as something else, like fiberboard or MDF as plastic or hardwood, but doing so cheapens the product to the eye. It’s far more preferable to admit that a low-cost material is present and design around it than to create an inauthentic façade.
Authenticity, or honest materials, is a timeless design style that is emerging as more en-vogue than ever. It’s easiest to adhere to authenticity in your furniture by avoiding painted or especially ornate pieces.
Sustainability
Green is growing in importance across lifestyles, which means that it is emerging as a noteworthy feature of furniture design. There are a few ways furniture can be more sustainable:
- It can be made from renewable or recycled materials. Many modern fabrics are made with plastics, which are difficult to produce and slow to degrade. While that makes them useful furniture — they are durable and easy to clean — it also means they are wasteful to produce and difficult to dispose of. You can find furniture that uses recycled or scrap fabrics to solve this problem.
- It can be economical and eco-friendly in transportation. Any large, bulky product like furniture takes extra resources to ship to stores or consumers. Furniture that is economical with space, i.e. flat pack furniture, reduces the transportation load and thus cuts back on your carbon footprint. Plus, you can get Jersey furniture assembly companies to put your furniture together, so you don’t waste your time while saving the environment.
- It is produced in an ethical and environmental way. While sourcing eco-friendly materials is important, it’s equally important that furniture makers commit to fair trade practices, as well. It’s common for furniture to be produced in developing nations, where resources as well as labor can be obtained for abhorrently low costs. Thus hurts the environment by driving developing nations to devour their natural resources and treat native populations with less care.
Open Storage
Minimalism is a style that many designers anticipate waning in the coming months and years — but that doesn’t mean people are automatically going to start acquiring more stuff. In fact, the Digital Age allows you to reduce the number of your possessions significantly: Thanks to streaming services, you don’t have stacks of DVDS; thanks to the cloud, you don’t need file cabinets; thanks to e-readers, you don’t need bookshelves, etc.
That’s why you should start transitioning away from hidden storage solutions, like wood-front cabinets and chests, and toward open storage solutions. Cubbies, shelves and the like make rooms feel larger and lighter, and they allow you to showcase your most prized belongings rather than hiding them away. You don’t have to have a minimalist design style to incorporate open storage; you can use oversized and/or plentiful décor to suit the growing maximal trend without shutting everything behind heavy cabinets.
Bold Colors and Patterns
As minimalism diminishes, so too do the plain white, beige, gray and black color schemes. Now, designers want to see more color — bright, bold color — and busy patterns on the walls and furniture. Instead of playing it safe with a boring brown, white or black sofa, consider investing in something with more life, like rosy pink or lime green. If you aren’t daring enough for that kind of color, a rich navy or muted red will also suffice. Then again, you might opt for a geometric pattern in your furniture. Tables and chairs with tight, symmetrical lines and odd angles will catch the eye and add more excitement into your room’s design.
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