We have come to that time of the year when most of Europe’s biggest design fairs and festivals have come to a end, the dust just having settled on London Design Festival. Of course, there’s still Design Miami and Design Mumbai to look forward to, as well as the fiun of Decorex in the UK, but this feels like as good of a time as any to reflect on what we have seen throughout 2025. Having chewed over and properly digested the wealth of new ideas and experimental designs out there, these feel like the trends most likely to have a big and lasting effect on our homes. The future looks promising…
Extreme generosity
There has been a shift towards grand proportions in furniture for some time now but, this year, we saw comfort taken to new heights. Perhaps the most notable example of this was Philippe Malouin’s ‘Great’ sofa for Hem – a monumental name for a design presented at the brand’s 10th-anniversary showcase at Capsule Plaza in Milan, where it dominated a room.
It may be the biggest sofa we’ve seen for some time, but it is not the only one dialling up the generosity of form. ‘Biboni’ by Johnston Marklee for Knoll cleverly reimagines the tyre-like rolls of the Michelin Man. Also worthy of note are the ‘Lisse’ sofa by Sabine Marcelis for La Cividina, with a backrest that locks its seat into a lavish embrace, and Pieter Maes’s ‘Strata’ at Boon Editions (pictured top), a sofa that reminds us of the inflated sexiness of fashion designer Harri’s clothing.
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It’s fitting, too, that ‘Tufty Time’ by Patricia Urquiola for B&B Italia celebrated its 20th anniversary with a re-edition this year. Revolutionary at the time for taking the traditional form of the Chesterfield sofa and emphasising the quilting, its message of comfort that could not be more relevant today.
Innovations in glass
This year has been something of a renaissance for glass, fuelled by a new generation of creatives who are pushing the possibilities of this most delicate of materials. The talk of Milan design week was 6:AM’s debut solo showcase – presented in Piscina Cozzi’s former public baths – that was like a peep show of delights. In one cubicle, a Bauhaus-inspired chandelier; in another, ‘Civetta’, a sculpture of an owl made from cane glass and murrine rods. The unexpected made the experience special.
Unique approaches to textured glass have also been on display, from Atelier de Troupe’s hand-stamped ‘Canale’ lights and the ‘Latch’ tables by Marco Paolelli and Sandro Meneghello for Porada, to Linde Freya Tangelder’s ‘Fluid Joinery’ table for Cassina and Vincent Van Duysen’s ‘Optô’ collection for Wonderglass, with circular perforations that hold glass tubes (these form the legs, but can also be attached to the top as decorative vases).
There is colour, too, in the shape of Tomás Alonso’s ‘Pivot’ side table for Hermès – a perfectly proportioned contemporary approach to stained glass, topped with a pivoting leather tray.
Exaggerated texture
Whether craggy, fluffy or fringed, the trend is for texture to be more maximalist than ever before. Sleek lines are out, and something more akin to the work of nature (flawed but beautiful) is in vogue. Imperfettolab is an excellent example of this approach. Whether it’s a bench with the rough appearance of a carbonised tree trunk or a fibreglass coffee table that resembles rugged stone, its work makes the natural dramatic.
More avant-garde examples of exaggerated texture were on display at Alcova this year, from CompletedWorks’ ‘Silver Console’ (cast in aluminium from moulds formed using polystyrene blocks and treated with silver nitrate to achieve an almost molten finish) to Lara Bohinc’s ‘Betsy’ collection for Uniqka, where oversized and overlaid leather fringing resembles feathers that beg to be ruffled. Luckily, with this trend, you are encouraged to touch.
Statement joints
The furniture world’s penchant for a streamlined aesthetic has meant that the functional elements (the joints, fastenings, nuts and bolts) have long been hidden or disguised. That, it seems, is an approach that’s shifting.
At this year’s Milan design week, we spotted a lot of – dare we say it – rather sexy, often over-exaggerated joints. The wooden chairs in NM3’s collection for No Ga studio had traditional mortise and tenon joints that busted out of the sides of the seats, becoming a decorative device. Equally, the colour choices (which included eye-catching pink and green) for the brushed-aluminium joints holding together Patricia Urquiola’s new ‘Opalia’ table for Glas Italia suggest that the designer wants them to be noticed, and the brackets that hold up the shelves of Formafantasma’s ‘FF-Spine’ bookcase for Cassina stand out in a darker timber than the rest of the piece.
For his ‘Bent Aluminium’ series for Lehni, Philippe Malouin wanted your gaze to be drawn to the feet – pieces were raised up on platform-like heels of nylon blocks, held in place with visible bolts. It’s now cool to show your workings.
Bedroom antics
You must have been snoozing if you didn’t realise that this year has been all about the bedroom. There’ve been several standout beds to be seen – special mention must be given to Hannes Peer’s ‘Aura’ for Baxter, Patricia Urquiola’s ‘Mon-Nid’ for Cassina, the ‘Theo’ by Yabu Pushelberg for Molteni & C, Loro Piana’s circular ‘Varallo’ bed – showcased in cinematic fashion by DimoreMilano during Milan design week – and Garance Vallée’s bed for Monde Singulier gallery, part of her debut ‘2093’ collection.
Memorable for making us think about the bedroom in a whole new light, though, was ‘Chase the Sun’, an installation where beds (or rather headboards) were the stars of the show, with uniquely fabulous and material-focused designs by India Mahdavi, Sam Baron,
Martino Gamper and Julie Richoz presented within minimalist spaces draped with butter-yellow curtains. There’s never been a better excuse for a lie-in.
Colour-saturated lacquer
Gloss has been growing in popularity for some time now but, this year, the designs have been shinier and brighter. It is perhaps not surprising that some of the boldest examples are to be found at Roche Bobois. After all, the brand announced its collaboration with film director Pedro Almodóvar – the maestro whose works such as Volver and All About My Mother feature glossy red (used to symbolise the emotional intensity of his storytelling) almost as often as they do Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz.
Exto unveiled its new ‘Atrio’ mirrors by Giuseppe Arezzi, their reflective frames accentuating the glossy appearance, while some of Italy’s most luxurious brands have been embracing the beauty of lacquer – think Natuzzi’s ‘Valzer’ table in a mocha hue, Andrea Parisio’s ‘Frank’ and ‘Henry’ for Meridiani and Turri’s ‘Kenobi’ table by Marco Acerbis.
Next-gen lanterns
Perhaps it is the fact that, this year, Salone del Mobile played host to the biannual Euroluce fair, but it feels like the future of lighting is brighter than ever. What has stood out are designs that seem to grab the baton of the Japanese paper lantern (think Isamu Noguchi’s iconic designs for Vitra) and run with it in intriguing directions.
British designer Tom Dixon’s ‘Soft’, a pendant clad in an ultra-matte spray-on material (originally developed by the US military) offers a diffused glow reminiscent of paper, while Michael Anastassiades kept his material choice traditional (Japanese washi paper), but innovated with the construction of his ‘Cygnet’ lights. The pieces, inspired by the structure of kites, are made using two equilateral triangles of paper illuminated by an invisible LED. There is a geometric simplicity to Anastassiades’s design, while the ‘O Series’ lamps – presented at Issey Miyake’s Milan store and created in collaboration between its A-POC Able experimental arm, Atelier Oï and Japanese manufacturer Ambientec– have a complex delicacy created using pleated recycled polyester set within a metal frame.
Lastly, Erwan Bouroullec’s ‘Maap’ for Flos has stuck in our minds. Made of Tyvek, an ultra-durable fabric, the design is free-form, scrunched over a customisable magnetic mounting system. It brings to mind the poignancy of the plastic bag floating in the breeze at the end of American Beauty – and we are convinced it will be equally iconic.
Hyper-locality
In 2025, it seems the design world has chosen to tackle one of the more thorny, less headline-grabbing issues of the sustainability mission: the impact of transportation. How far materials travel during the manufacturing of a design can have a major impact on its carbon footprint. Reducing those miles is the next important step.
One company making strides in this field is Hydro – the aluminium brand that, last year, presented pieces made from post-consumer waste metal. This year, it had an even more ambitious project: each item in the collection – including lights by Sabine Marcelis and a super-sleek bin by Stefan Diez – was constructed using materials sourced within a 100-kilometre radius. Transport emissions were reduced by a staggering 90 per cent in comparison to the previous year.
Unsurprisingly, this is an issue that younger designers are especially attuned to. At House of Switzerland during Milan design week, Justus Hilfenhaus’s ‘Ecal X Ecal’ featured pieces that the innovative students at the Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne had created using materials sourced from inside the institution; functional items both for the school and from the school.
Japanese influence
Whether it is the limited-edition ‘Rose’ collection by Faye Toogood – presented as part of a celebration of porcelain expert Noritake’s 120th anniversary – or Muji’s ‘Manifesto House’ (full of their iconic objects reimagined by young designers), which this year created a moment of zen within a garden in the centre of Brera, Japanese design was leading the conversation this year.
Maruni unveiled an extension to the much-loved ‘Hiroshima’ series by Naoto Fukasawa, while Japanese starchitect Kengo Kuma showed his first contemporary-furniture collection ‘HOS’ for Giandia Blasco. The joinery of its chairs brought to mind Jigoku-gumi (literally meaning interlocking hell), the woodworking technique Kuma’s studio used to create the façade of the Sunny Hills store in Tokyo. For new Japanese talent, look no further than Atsushi Shindo, whose dreamy forest of pillar-like floor lamps were on show at SaloneSatellite 2025.
