If you're looking to renovate, you might be keen to know which design trends are about to have a major moment.
The leading platform for home renovation and design, Houzz, has unique insights into how people are updating their homes.
Collecting insights from the community of homeowners and home professionals, Houzz Australia & New Zealand Editor Vanessa Walker has predicted four of the most significant design ideas that are set to take off on our shores this year and next.
1. The return of feel-good furnishings
Right now we’re seeing designers and architects on Houzz manifest a wave of the ’70s in building forms from curves to rounded panelling, arches and sunken rooms.
Following suit, soon we will experience a resurgence of the style return in feel-good furnishings. Be prepared to see decor including tufted cotton, fringed bedspreads and floral bed linen in ’70s colourways, such as russet offset by soft pastel-like hues.
Image: Villa Styling
2. It’s hip to be square
While organic shapes are perennially popular, we’re seeing more square tiles appearing in fashion-forward kitchens and bathrooms on Houzz. An aesthetic that lends itself to linear conformity but also zellige-style in variations of colour, glazes and rippled surfaces.
More and more, hip squares will take form in tiled furniture, in particular benches, side tables and coffee tables.
Image: Three Birds Renovations
3. The slim shaker
Shaker cabinet style gets a ‘slim’ shake-up. This version of the trend features a flat centre panel and square-edged border – but with finer, narrower frames and with recessed handles or subtle finger pulls.
Professionals on Houzz say it solves what has long been a design conundrum, how to have a streamlined contemporary kitchen with just enough detail to give it a sense of place in period homes.
Image: Three Birds Renovations
4. Creative brickwork
Curved, cut-out or coloured, the rise of artisanal bricks and using brick materials in creative ways are being more readily integrated into Australian architecture as we’ve seen on Houzz. Creating far more unique and interesting home facades, this trend will cement itself as a modern 21st-century exterior style.
Image: Villa Styling
Vanessa notes, “As we continue to cautiously navigate our way through the pandemic, solitude in nostalgia has translated into design trends with a retro resurgence in furnishings, fixtures and colour choices by homeowners and designers on Houzz.”
“More time spent indoors has us rethinking our homes, and with so many renovations of heritage homes as well as new builds underway in Australia, during a global timber shortage, we’re at the precipice of where new architectural concepts are materialising in home designs of this age.”