The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) has released its 2024 Trends Outlook, a research report identifying shifts in societal and demographic trends impacting, or predicted to impact, interior design in the year ahead. Key findings in 2024 explore four overarching trends that will impact the design practice in transformative ways: consumers’ desire for connection, the allure of quiet luxury, blurred lines between live-work-and-play, and the intersection of sustainability and wellness with life and business.
“The world today recognizes the leading role design plays in impacting the ways we live, work, learn, play and heal,” said Khoi Vo, chief executive officer, ASID. “This report serves as a compass to guide us in the year ahead, knowing that design is critical when considering everything from personal wellness to a corporation’s bottom line. As the largest professional organization serving all sectors of the interior design community, ASID is dedicated to providing our community with tools to impact the world through design.”
The findings of the 2024 report underscore the importance of authenticity and connection, which serves as an undercurrent to many of the trends affecting design— from generational and familial shifts to work-life balance and quiet luxury. Highlights are included below:
Living With & Learning From Gen Z: Gen Z’s experiences over the years have shaped and shifted their desire for genuine connections. Moving forward in 2024, designers should consider this change in consumer culture and use the generation’s evolving empathies and concerns to inform future design decisions.
Solo Living & Seeking Connection: With solo-living on the rise, Americans are seeking connectedness to loved ones and their communities. Through gathering spaces within the home, considerations of family pets in design, and amusement and “eatertainment,” designers can use their practice to further their clients’ connections in 2024.
The 2024 report also details trends impacting the different sectors of design, highlighting the effects of these trends in both residential and commercial spaces:
Wellness in Gathering Spaces: Like many restaurants and bars, kitchens are now using large window walls to connect visually with the outdoors, while living rooms are using retractable window panels to extend spaces onto patios. Beyond increasing the ease of entertaining, connecting both visually and physically with nature has been shown to reduce blood pressure and heart rates and improve engagement, attentiveness and cognitive performance.
Aging in Place: According to the National Institute on Aging, many people want to stay in their own home and maintain independence for as long as possible, and they will need help to retrofit their homes. “Innovative solutions that enable the elderly to remain in their own homes for longer, rather than taking up space in hospitals, hospices and nursing homes” are increasingly important as a significant number of the population ages.
Blending Sustainability & Wellness: As companies and designers think holistically about creating environments that support better human health, many are increasingly recognizing the interconnectedness of individual health, community health and environmental stewardships. With many firms implementing tactics in both buildings and employee programs to synthesize sustainability and wellness, we’re seeing an increase in design decisions contributing to personal wellness and building health including better indoor air quality, increased natural light, and other amenities.
Finally, the report provides insight on trends impacting the business side of interior design and how practices are shifting in the year to come. This year’s finding include:
AI & Technology have been revolutionizing the design industry: Generative AI applications are being used in a variety of applications: organizations are using AI to generate floor plans, design iterations, occupancy, and energy models, coordinated sets of construction documents, specifications and reports; while others are using it to increase autonomy, create experience-driven design and deliver environmental settings that occupants can customize.
Blurring the Lines Between Live-Work-Play: As the lines between work and play fade, designers need to be well-versed in cross-specialty design, blending the sectors of design through the incorporation of “eatertainment” spaces in residences, informal living rooms in corporate offices, team workspace and conference rooms in hotels, and more.