2024 Interior Design Forecast

From plunge pools to bee-friendly gardens, gas ranges to hidden kitchens, the dawn of mid-pastels to the rise and fall of greige—this year at AD PRO, we’ve tackled the topics designers are asking about in our member-exclusive trend reports. For our final dispatch of 2023, we’re going whole-home and bringing you the reporting and expert predictions you’ll need to stay ahead for the next lap around the sun. The insights below have been culled from AD’s comprehensive network of designers across the globe, including AD100 listees, AD PRO Directory members, connoisseurs in color—and even editors on our own team. We hope you’ll find their revelations as compelling as we do. —Lila Allen, senior editor, AD PRO

In This Report

• Tomorrow’s Floor Plan
• Interior Trends to Watch (Plus: What AD Editors Say Will Take Off in 2024)
• Recording: Workshop
• The Design Era of the Moment
• Preparing for Environmental Changes
• Embracing Tech

The way we use our homes is constantly changing, and societal shifts, technological advances, and work habits cause that ebb and flow. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic upended our relationships with our living spaces, forcing us to reckon with what we really need from each room. When functionality became crucial, layout changes became inevitable. However, as residents have increasingly returned to offices, not all of those interior transformations are here to stay.

Today, “everything is up for redesign,” says Los Angeles–based designer and AD PRO Directory member Brigette Romanek. “Rooms serve multiple purposes, walls are back, and feeling comfortable is important,” she notes, adding that many of those trends are the direct result of the rise in remote work. Creating dedicated spaces for Zoom calls—and for disconnecting after logging off them—required a substantial rejiggering of existing layouts. “I’ve worked on dining rooms becoming offices, offices becoming wellness rooms, bathtubs put on balconies,” continues Romanek. Particularly in the warmer climes of California, Texas, or Florida, where many people relocated over the past three years, outdoor rooms are in high demand, she notes.

Does increasing in-home separation of work and pleasure spell the end of the open-plan layout? Not quite. “Open plan will always exist; that style is a staple,” says Romanek, and Prospect Refuge Studio founder Victoria Sass agrees. “We are in a hybrid phase where we want some multipurpose spaces alongside highly tailored function-specific spaces,” says the Minneapolis designer, who now has more in-depth design conversations with homeowners about how they will use their rooms. “It’s a both/and situation.”

This means that the prevailing layouts of the past two decades for social spaces are being reconsidered. In the kitchen, “I see less and less desire for island dining, but that means we have to think carefully about the size and adjacency of daily dining spaces,” Sass says. “Sofas in kitchens are a fun new twist that we are proposing more often.” Although keeping cooking and dining areas flowing is still appealing, especially for young families, White Arrow cofounder Keren Richter is observing more walled-off living rooms. “I’m less convinced that watching movies or TV happens in the same location as food prep,” says the Brooklyn-based designer.

Since it was popularized 70 years ago, the television has dictated living room interiors. This is largely still the case, though extra effort is being made to hide or find alternatives to a shiny black screen in the middle of a wall. (Just see Francesca Perry’s article on hiding the TV below.) “We’ve designed several homes where a projector disappears into the ceiling or a TV hides behind a cabinet or Shaker panel doors,” says Richter, who adds that this allows rooms to have “a more flexible or ‘environmental’ footprint.” Old-school conversation pits and modular furniture have been revived as options to reorient living rooms toward socializing.

Thanks to historic homes, which typically have a larger number of small rooms, the 2000s approach of demolishing all the internal walls has been ditched in favor of creating a good flow between separated spaces. “I embrace the quirks when I can and use them to my advantage as highlights,” Romanek says. Since many older buildings have been extended and replanned multiple times over the decades, Sass recommends combining styles and trends from their different eras to achieve more complex, interesting, and authentic layouts. “If I had my way, I’d be steering everyone towards more eclectic floor plans that reference multiple time periods,” she reveals.

Meanwhile, modern buildings have their own challenges. Large expanses of glass that enclose apartments in contemporary high-rises can be a headache when deciding how best to lay out a space. “I love the idea of large-scale windows, but when condos prioritize light over walls, it often makes furniture placement quite tricky,” says Richter, who gets around the issue by moving larger pieces, like sofas, away from the perimeters altogether or using them to frame the views outside.

It’s evident that in 2024 more thought and attention will be paid to ensure that every space in the home is optimized for its occupants. The future of room plans will rely on creativity, experimentation, and pushing boundaries—sometimes literally—to find the best arrangements for our new normal. “You have to go exploring a bit if you want to end up in new territory,” Sass says. Think outside of the box, she suggests, and solutions will often present themselves. —Dan Howarth

“How do you take the past and slam it right into the future? That’s where we’re headed,” predicts New York–based AD PRO Directory designer Clive Lonstein, pointing to a daring Fortuny fabric swatch with a wavy red pattern against a blue background. “A historic fabric house came up with this contemporary pattern infused with an almost fluorescent tonality,” Lonstein marvels. “Fabric houses are looking for stronger ways to update their lines.” Indeed, in anticipation of its 150th anniversary in 2025, Liberty recently launched FuturLiberty in the US, a collection of eye-catching geometric motifs produced in collaboration with Italian designer and couturier Federico Forquet. The designs are a far cry from the delicate microflorals that made the iconic British brand’s name.

Liberty and Fortuny aren’t alone: Design experts agree that next year’s fabrics and finishes will go bold. Below, they share five ways they’re poised to make a statement.

Though bouclé’s ubiquity endures—now even at the Paris flea market, much to Lonstein’s disappointment—AD100 designer Josh Greene believes the next iteration of the nubbly fabric is on the horizon. “People like bouclé because it’s soft and because of this trend of shapely, rounded furniture à la Vladimir Kagan. To upholster those curves well, you need a bouclé that pulls in multiple directions,” he explains. However, the days of solid colors are over. Two-tone bouclé alongside “supersoft, comfy, and durable” fabrics like chenille are the future, says the designer, who is also fond of matelassé.

Rather than featuring small pops of color in the form of, say, a throw pillow—which Gray Davis, cofounder of Meyer Davis, declares is on its way out—in 2024 interior designers will bravely drench interiors in monochrome hues. “We’re seeing monochromatic colors inspired by 1990s minimalism, yet no longer in the neutrals of the ’90s. It’s minimalism on steroids,” says Lonstein, who, for a project in Seattle, complemented a sitting room’s mahogany walls with a similarly colored Loro Piana plaid-upholstered sofa. For Mexico City–based architect and designer Lorena Vieyra, color gives every project an important touch: “We’re moving into pastel tones lately, and I feel that what’s on the horizon will be to bring the volume up and go into more vivid colors. It’s a good time to go for it. Be playful.”

Developers’ overuse has rendered brass hardware on the outs, reveals AD PRO Directory designer Lauren Piscione, principal of LP Creative Design. Instead, “I’m gravitating toward polished nickels, pewters—metals in that silver category—as well as coppers and Corten steel,” she says. “I’m looking for something that’s timeless. The trend is not being on trend.”

“There are always going to be people who want Calacatta Gold for their kitchen counters, but there are a lot of other interesting types of stone out there. It’s not just all white or beige,” says Greene, who praises AD100 Hall of Fame designer Kelly Wearstler for long using “really wild and interesting stone to make spaces feel unique.” He encourages a visit to the stone yards in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, or Long Island City, Queens, where he often takes clients to see what speaks to them firsthand. For Kiki Dennis, a principal at TenBerke, using the material comes with a sense of responsibility. “We’re trying to be more conscious about specifying natural stone, focusing on things that don’t have as much of a carbon footprint extraction price, and trying to be more local when we can,” Dennis says.

“We’re still in comfy fabric land, spending a lot of time at home adjusting from our COVID habitat,” says AD PRO Directory designer Zoe Feldman, who is using a lot of mohairs and corduroys in her projects right now. But it doesn’t stop with the sofa these days: “I think we’ll see softer finishes on walls, including wools.” And lest that be the most surprising prediction, Joa Studholme, color curator for Farrow & Ball, forecasts that the “transformative power of wallpaper will be embraced in graphic stripes used in a myriad of ways: horizontally, vertically, over ceilings and doors.” (Yes, doors!)

As these trend lines exuberantly declare, clients are making use of every bit of square footage in their homes. “People are getting more and more comfortable with maximalist and deeply personalized spaces,” says AD PRO Directory designer Victoria Sass, founder of Prospect Refuge Studio. And they are also open to pushing the design envelope with materials employed in adventurous ways. “If you can dream it,” Sass concludes, “2024 is the year to do it!” —Bridget Moriarity

What AD Editors Say Will Take Off in 2024

“I think a contemporary twist on Art Deco is going to have a resurgence. Think: Lacquered surfaces, rich woods like mahogany or walnut, and industrial metals like mirror-polished stainless steel.” —Hannah Martin, senior design editor

“I think we are about to enter the golden age of unexpected upholstery. I’m thinking about tapes, tassels, and trims being used to create pattern and dimension. Patchworks of multiple fabrics working together on one piece. Color combinations that feel wacky... like a deep purple mohair velvet sofa with mustard grosgrain tape. I’m excited to see how designers dive deeper into the world of maximalism through upholstery.” —Madeline O’Malley, market director

“People have been manifesting the return of brown furniture for some time, but now more than ever classic case goods seem poised for a comeback—both on account of necessity and want. With climate change top of mind and global economic fates hanging in the balance, vintage wood pieces both make the most or what we already have (reducing our collective embodied carbon footprint) while satisfying our lust for the thrifty and hand hewn.” —Sam Cochran, global features director

“Earlier this year, my colleague Hannah Martin proposed that industrial minimalism is making a quiet comeback. Ever since then, I’ve had this growing suspicion that metallics will be back in full swing for 2024 which I think is very chic. From stainless-steel tablewares and USM Haller systems to silver modular sofas and chrome lighting, expect to see more spaces that shimmer!” —Sydney Gore, senior design editor, digital

“Nearly every month, I get word of another British brand expanding stateside. OKA launched in Houston, Little Greene Paint in Greenwich, And Objects in New York—and even more are still under wraps. They share, in essence, an alluring charm and a know-how for using color (nay, colour!) without abandon. American interiors, take note!” —Mel Studach, editor, AD PRO

“This is the second year I’ve been rooting for corduroy to finally make its comeback—especially if it has a superwide wale. Given the current yen for feel-good spaces, as well as the revival of the prep aesthetic, I’m optimistic that its moment has finally arrived.” —Lila Allen, senior editor, AD PRO

“Far from stuffy, clean-lined canopy beds the likes of which Rose Uniacke sells are on the rise for 2024. Uniacke’s variety, with its chain-clad frame, has a hint of medievalism that recalls the ongoing vogue for monastic bed making. Perhaps this is the next stage in the ongoing evolution of bed trends? We think the answer might just be yes.” —Madeleine Luckel, senior design editor, digital

Over the past few years, design aficionados might be forgiven for feeling like they’re facing not so much a time warp, but a stopped clock. Apart from a brief blip in the depths of the pandemic—remember when everyone on Instagram suddenly installed checkered print, mirror balls, and motivational neon signs in their rooms, housebound and yearning for a mix of 1980s Miami Vice hedonism, 1990s Peach Pit nostalgia, and early 2000s indie sleaze?—for much of the last decade, trends cycled back to the 1970s and stayed there. From blob sofas and rattan to Gaetano Pesce and Maria Pergay, the botanics and bohemia of the ’70s vibe in large part define the 2020s.

Those hoping for change will have to wait. The influential 1stDibs Designer Survey prognosticates still-growing enthusiasm for the 1970s groovy palette of chocolate brown, burnt orange, and mustard in 2024. Mushroom lamps will continue to sprout up everywhere. And, generally, the annual survey’s hundreds of designers report a doubling of interest in 1970s bohemianism. “In furniture trends and shopping,” says Anthony Barzilay Freund, editorial director and director of fine art at 1stDibs. “It’s just continuing to be popular today,” he adds.

Perhaps instead of waiting for trends to change, then, designers might change how they think of them. When it comes to historical periods, says INC founding partner and creative and managing director Adam Rolston, “there’s a kind of Russian doll element. The ’70s were very intensely interested in the 1930s and 1940s. But it was both forward- and backward-looking. There was a return to preindustrial aesthetics and craft but also a look forward in terms of progressive culture and breaking the rules and boundaries of the midcentury.”

Tracking the design-trend cycle, there are a few lessons still to be learned. The first is that historical movements draw from their own histories. Retrospective thinking isn’t the same as a conservative longing for an imagined past: It gleans a clearer understanding of what occurred and what had a lasting effect. “As a design community,” says JSN Studio cofounder and chief executive Adair Curtis, “we champion things that have pedigree.” Pedigree accrues with time. Yet honoring it demands work more nuanced than designing a period-perfect room around a Mario Bellini Cameleonda sofa. “There are times when clients want to see things that feel spot on,” he says. “And I’m not a set designer in that way. I feel less inspired, I can’t lie, by having to copy and paste.” Instead, Curtis recommends a kind of archival patchwork—actually truer to both the ’70s aesthetic and our contemporary one. “What’s fresh today,” the designer says, “is definitely the mix of different patterns, materiality, textures, and periods.”

For Rolston, an open-minded outlook is equally mandatory when conceiving spaces that feel right for right now. “In the ’70s, we rejected typology,” he says, “like the sofa or the wingback chair as classical typologies. That wasn’t only a futurist idea, [it was] about breaking down the physical and social dynamics of sitting—a sofa that didn’t look like a ‘sofa,’ a chair that didn’t look like a ‘chair.’ And that means you can creatively interact with it, which feels like the free spirit of the era.”

If we are drawn to a period when rules were being broken, designers can use that inspiration to break the rules today. That could also mean releasing themselves from the trend cycle altogether and embracing the opportunity to play, get things wrong, and move along. “That time was a focus on the self and being able to self-define in a way that was personal but also larger,” Rolston says. “Not to get too political, but right now there are forces in our culture that believe in minority rule. And I think in reflection of that, the creative class is saying, ‘We’re not going back to tradition; we’re going to break with tradition.’”

That’s a lot of weight for a Bellini sofa to hold—but then, good design speaks to the present and future, no matter if we only think of it as a piece of the past. —Jesse Dorris

For New England designer Lauren Miles, it was an ideal project: a ski-in, ski-out vacation home near Killington, the swank resort in central Vermont. With her design approved, materials sourced, and installs scheduled throughout the summer, everything was on track for the client to begin enjoying their home by early November. Then came the rains—days of deluge so extreme, the National Weather Service named it The Great Vermont Flood of July 2023.

“The job was delayed for five weeks because the road completely washed away and there was no access to the house at all,” Miles recalls. Once she and the contractors did get back on-site, it was still so persistently wet that they had to make a Home Depot run for dehumidifiers just to install the wood flooring. If that was wasn’t enough, a dense blanket of smoke from record wildfires in Canada fell over the Northeast that same month, placing the designer and more than 100 million other Americans under “hazardous” air quality warnings.

“Climate is just more of a factor now, and it can throw a wrench in things,” says Miles, who is still hustling to have the project completed in time for the holidays.

Though architects and designers have been steadily adopting more sustainable building practices and products for years, the other big climate word, “resiliency,” has taken on a new, urgent meaning: 23 separate billion-dollar disasters hit US residents from January to September this year, the largest number since anyone started counting. That’s a lot to recover from, and nearly every part of the country has been affected.

“Your home is literally your shelter now,” says Khoi Vo, CEO of the American Society of Interior Designers, who believes the industry has an important role to play in minimizing disaster risk going forward. “It’s a cultural shift that I think we all need to embrace very quickly.”

The good news, say Vo and other industry leaders, is that designers already have a variety of solutions, and marketing yourself as someone who can guide clients through storm, heat, fire, and flood precautions while prioritizing their quality of life is win-win. Jessica Cooper, of the International WELL Building Institute, likens it to the way designers have helped people retrofit their homes to age-in-place or serve them better during COVID lockdowns. “Resiliency-based considerations can make your life easier today,” says the chief product officer. “Just having appropriate shading could help lower your energy bills…. You’re enabled.”

Scottsdale, Arizona–based designer Tanya Shively has built her practice around the intersection of style, luxury, health, and well-being. She regularly teaches clients how to keep the heat out (with transparent sunscreens, window tints, shading—“it’s a multilayer thing, the more layers the better!”), as well as how to keep air fresh and clean even when occupants must shelter in place.

“Air quality inside is frequently worse than outside because of all the things we bring into our houses,” Shively says. “Thankfully, there’s been a movement to eliminate toxic chemicals in household stuff. I’m very conscious in not using flame retardants, stain repellants, or any of those coatings—they never really worked that well anyway, and they can leech into our air with the heat.”

Lisa Carey Moore, director of the buildings team at the International Living Future Institute, recommends the Declare Marketplace and Parsons Healthy Materials Lab as designer resources to parse which fabrics, flooring, furniture, and paints/sealants make sense as they begin to think about climate-proofing or “ruggedizing” homes. “If you’re in a competitive area, you’re going to have an edge if you have a plan to help clients with this,” Carey Moore says. That plan could include mold-resistant materials; air filtration systems; HEPA-filtered vacuums; a backup battery or generator for power outages; and attractive, easy-access storage for extra food and water.

Some of this may sound about as sexy as a FEMA Checklist, but that’s where the designer’s real talent comes in, according to Alyssa-Amor Gibbons, a sustainability consultant and architectural designer who works in hurricane zones. “Our capacity of imagination is immense,” she says. She offers the example of switching out wood flooring for tile in flood-prone areas but finding tiles inspired by a client’s happy travel memories in Morocco.

“The future is about finding a way to genuinely consider how we tick the boxes we need to tick, but adding flourish so that we enjoy our life on Earth,” Gibbons says. “We’re clever enough to figure it out.” —Audrey Gray

How do you style a shiny black rectangle? No longer an awkward clunky presence, the television is slimmer and sleeker than it’s ever been, but for many it still packs an unwelcome visual punch in interiors. Some designers seek clever ways to conceal the TV while others embrace it as a design object or employ new products to turn it into a piece of statement furniture. In a world where we are seemingly glued to screens, can we really make the black mirror look good? AD PRO asked top design experts to settle the debate.

“If there’s a television in a more formal living and entertaining space, I tend to build in a cabinet where it can be easily hidden,” says Los Angeles–based AD100 designer Jake Arnold. For Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s living room in Beverly Hills, Arnold designed a statement cabinet, upholstered in chinoiserie-inspired fabric by Jim Thompson, that opens to theatrically reveal a hidden screen within. Such an approach “allows the space to be more casual when needed and more formal and blended when desired,” adds the talent, who believes clients are increasingly open to investing in creative, beautiful, functional solutions to hide a TV.

In Arthur Dunnam for Jed Johnson Studio (ADJJ)’s design for an art collector’s library, the television can be lowered from the coffered ceiling with the flick of a switch. “Due to the layout of the room, we couldn’t give up a wall,” says Kelly Zerbini, ADJJ’s design director. Storing the TV overhead maximizes square footage for perimeter seating and hanging artworks. “When the TV is not in use, one has no idea it is housed in the ceiling,” says Zerbini, who has also concealed televisions in cabinets, bookcases, or behind two-way mirrors in other projects.

Sydney-based YSG Studio has designed bespoke sliding door solutions, like timber frames inspired by Japanese shoji screens and custom joinery units, to satisfy client demand for a living room TV that can be stored away. However, director Yasmine Ghoniem notes that many clients are opting out of a screen in the bedroom altogether. “I guess iPads, laptops, and smart phones have replaced them there,” she says.

YSG Studio prefers to disguise TV monitors in homes, Ghoniem explains, but this doesn't always require a cabinet or screen. In a recent project for a waterfront home in Sydney, the firm built the television into a wall in the open-plan kitchen-living room and framed it in black tumbled marble mosaic that extends to the floor. Though the TV might not be entirely hidden, it is camouflaged when not in use, blending into the background.

In a London townhouse project, local studio Design & That also used dark tones to visually soften a TV’s presence. Sitting within a built-in dark stained oak shelving system in the home’s basement media room, the black screen disappears into the shadows.

If you can’t beat it, make a statement. Some innovative electronics companies have taken on the design challenge themselves, making pros’ lives just a little easier. Ukrainian practice Isto sourced Bang & Olufsen’s Beovision Harmony TV as a design focal point for the living room of a Dubai villa. The freestanding object encases the television screen in a square oak speaker base; when in use, the screen rises and the speakers twist into a new position underneath. When not, “the TV simply executes the aesthetic function of a conventional art object,” says Isto chief interior designer Polina Soloviova.

Madrid-based studio Plutarco, meanwhile, chose the Bouroullec brothers-designed Samsung Serif TV for a recent apartment project in the Spanish capital. “We normally hide [the TV], but in this case we went for the opposite,” explains cofounder Enrique Ventosa. The midcentury-modern-inspired mobile furniture piece “works as a floating frame,” and has a shelf for curated design objects, he adds.

Although Ventosa admits his studio is not typically fond of a “big black screen,” TVs are “part of our lives. Why not think about the best option to integrate it?” —Francesca Perry