Each year, everything from art and fashion to interiors both shape and are shaped by the zeitgeist. So, what does this mean for 2024 home trends?
Interior Designer and co-host of 9Life’s Australia’s Best House, Sydney’s Briellyn Turton lives and breathes the transformation of homes.
Running her own design practice, Studio Brie, and regularly sharing her knowledge and design tips with her 155,000 followers on TikTok well and truly has her finger on the pulse of interior trends.
Brie recently shared her official trend forecast for 2024 and beyond, with four key design avenues she sees us headed down.
1. Mess or ‘undone maximalism’: Lived-in, messy, undone – however you want to put it, this trend is all about relaxing into the (often chaotic) realism of everyday life as a way to revolt against mainstream perfectionism.
“This is an offshoot of maximalism and it’s essentially a rejection and rebellion against the idea of the picture-perfect interior we see in magazines and on Instagram. It’s about acknowledging that people live in a space and if you’re not super tidy, it’s ok – your home doesn’t have to look like a magazine set every second of every day.”
Turton credits TikTok as a driving force behind this particular trend.
“I think we have TikTok to directly thank for this, honestly. Because people show up on here and their homes are behind them in their natural state”.
2. Biophilic design: Turton acknowledges that biophilia is certainly not a new trend to 2024. It’s an enduring trend that we won’t see going anywhere this year.
“Biophilic design is the idea that the built environment and architecture connect us to nature. If you are building a home, you have a really beautiful opportunity to put some biophilic design into your architecture, such as connecting indoor and outdoor space, putting living trees or plants inside,” she says.
For those who aren’t building or renovating, Turton suggests hanging a mirror next to a window that beautifully frames a nearby tree or similar.
3. Outdoor furniture focus: Keeping with the indoor-outdoor theme, 2024 will be big on treating our outside spaces as rooms unto themselves, starting with investment into outdoor furniture personality and design flair.
“Traditionally, outdoor furniture has been a secondary consideration when decorating your home,” Turton explains,” But in 2024 and beyond, we’ll be putting just as much emphasis and effort into our outdoor furnishings as our indoor.
“We’ve seen local designers like Sarah Ellison debut their first outdoor collection, but also at Milan Design Week [in 2023] we saw a lot of presentation of really beautiful, thoughtful, well designed and exciting outdoor furniture. So, it might be time to get rid of that rusty set you’ve got outside and invest in something with a little more personality.”
4. Manmade, imperfect finishing: Imperfect finishing is another major trend for 2024 that endures from previous years. Turton explains that this man vs machine trend stems from the super popular wabi-sabi aesthetic – a Japanese philosophy and interior trend that appreciates the beauty of life’s imperfections and transience.
“It’s going to be about items in the home looking like they’ve been touched by hands and not a machine,” emphasises Turton. “This could go anywhere from architecture and using imperfect timber beams, down to decor and using a clearly handmade ceramic pot.
“This trend will span the lengths of interior design and personally, I think it’s amazing, and it’s moving away from the feeling of mass-produced machine-made items.”
5. Brown tones: Turton has also identified brown as ‘in’ for 2024. Whether you’re going for what’s being described as a ‘new neutral’ by way of lighter browns, or you prefer deeper chocolate and coffee tones for walls, designers the world over are in agreement that good old brown is a top colour trend for this year.
Often overlooked but when used well, brown imbues a space with elegance and is making its comeback in 2024.