Home Trends 2025-2026——Symbiotic trends in the “plus era”

The year 2024 is characterized as an "Era of Synergy," where society, nature, technology, humanity, and thought grow and evolve in mutual interdependence. This complexity in the relationships between humans and nature, society and nature, retro and future, as well as local and global, gives rise to many new symbiotic entities.

In the context of the macroeconomic cycle, the "Era of Divided Needs" sees consumer behavior becoming more cautious and rational. Future consumption will be driven by a dual force of both upgrades and downgrades. The new consumption upgrade manifests in a refined, frugal balance of quality and price, along with a counter-growth in emotional economy. Within this, the trend toward "light living" becomes more evident. This focuses on material quality, alongside the growing cultural, social, and health values that people seek in their lives.

The "New Productive Forces" encompass various fields, including future manufacturing, future information, and future materials. With the support of technologies like big data, the Internet of Things, and intelligent algorithms, the concept of smart homes and intelligent living—blending reality and virtuality—becomes a key issue in the "Era of Synergy."

"Culture’s New Retro" refers to an unconscious act of seeking roots in local culture and tracing one’s self-identity in a complex world. This path offers consumers a way to achieve self-worth recognition. The "New Chinese Style," along with artistic and digital innovations like Western-style interpretations and internet mysticism, are particularly popular among younger consumer groups.

1、Art, Nature, and Digital Nature

Nature has always been one of the core themes of classical Chinese aesthetics, emphasizing a return to the inner self, the pursuit of life's tranquility, emotional solace, and spiritual transcendence. In today's world, the pressures of the external environment have led more and more people to yearn for nature, seeking peace and harmony. This trend is evident in various aspects of life, from outdoor adventurers to urban micro-vacations, from local explorations to leisurely enjoyment of aesthetics. People are increasingly seeking to escape the hustle and bustle of city life, seeking tactile connections with nature.

The deep exploration of natural lifestyles and aesthetics has become a contemporary trend. Through diverse experiential approaches, innovative refinements of natural aesthetics, and the integration of digital nature, people are gradually creating a more harmonious, beautiful, and sustainable living environment. This fusion of the natural and the digital world offers new ways to connect with nature, while also enhancing the quality of life in the modern age.

The Artistic Pursuit of Ultimate Nature：The pursuit of ultimate nature in art begins by extracting materials, textures, and colors from the diversity of the natural world. Through design re-creation, elements such as walnut, oak, and elm wood, along with natural textures like wood burrs, raindrops, gravel, and stone grains, are integrated. These are complemented by the rich, subtle earth tones of plant greens, sky blues, deep greens, and highly restored wood hues. This approach creates an atmosphere of relaxation, comfort, tranquility, and warmth, offering a soothing effect on both body and mind. The trend of evoking a peaceful, nature-inspired ambiance is growing stronger.

Moreover, the demand for ultimate nature has given rise to more intricate and authentic expressions of natural design and technology. Techniques such as synchronous patterns, continuous textures, and Italian-style finishes have become key trends in this realm, bringing a deeper connection to the natural world.

Nature Experience in the Context of Slow Healing: A contemporary lifestyle attitude that prioritizes slow, healing experiences has become increasingly popular. Starting from the inner emotional value, this approach uses subtle neutral tones and warm, harmonious colors to create soothing, healing atmospheres. The use of textures that are gentle and skin-friendly further enhances the therapeutic quality of the environment. Designing spaces that provide a multi-sensory healing experience is now seen as an important trend in design.

The Color Expression of Digital Nature: The evolution of digital technology has made digital nature's color expressions an inevitable development. With the duality of reality and fantasy, digital technology pushes the boundaries of natural colors. Complex and deep tones such as blues and greens reflect idealized versions of nature in a way that is both immersive and surreal. These colors are transforming our living environments, offering an idealized natural aesthetic that blurs the lines between the real and the imagined.

2、Retro Classics and Retro Future

With the increasing pursuit of emotional value, people-oriented consumption behavior is becoming a strong trend. More and more young people are investing in experiencing local culture, tracing back to themselves, and exploring their roots, injecting new vitality and connotation into this trend. The historical culture, artistry, and spiritual belonging contained in these concepts are in line with modern people's desire for spiritual sustenance and cultural identity. In this context, in the era of rational consumption "quality-price ratio", in addition to quality craftsmanship, consumer behavior has become more focused on the emotional value of the atmosphere, social feeling, and experience brought by the product.

Retro and classic: Elegant style comes from classics, and the authenticity of life comes from nature. Being close to local culture and regional nature, balancing classic elegance and natural simplicity, has become an important way to pursue self-realization in quality life. Digging deep into retro design language is a hot topic. Continuing the classic culture category, there are royal purple, Angora red, national color Qianshan Cui, Ji red, pottery red, etc.; paying tribute to ingenuity and ancient handicrafts, there are original fabric patterns such as bamboo, rattan, hemp, silk, original texture patterns such as handmade paper, lacquer art, wood carving and other intangible cultural heritage skills; time imprint category, there are smoky colors, surprised colors, etc., classic allegorical dark patterns, there are chain mail, persimmon pattern, Ruyi pattern, etc., expressing the inner cultural and artistic sense and emotional atmosphere through subtle details, and using new language to describe contemporary oriental and Italian classics has become a design fashion.

Retro and future: The improvement of digital 3D printing technology in the subtle, delicate and real expression ability has made a breakthrough in the expression of material reality, and promoted the home furnishing field to usher in a new technological trend. The application and promotion of scientific technologies such as AI have made digital technology an important means of expressing classic culture in the virtual world. When reflected in real life, personalized customization and differentiated emotional satisfaction will no longer be an unattainable vision in the fields of design and production.

3、Digital technology and symbiotic technology
On December 2, the editorial department of "Yiwenjuezi" released the top ten buzzwords for 2024, among which "digitalization, intelligence for good, and future industries" were selected. "Digitalization" is a distinctive feature of new industrialization and an important way to form new quality productivity; "Intelligence for good" can not only promote industrial transformation and economic development, but also make society better and achieve sustainable development; the breakthrough and development of "future industries" will bring new impetus and changes to the economic development of China and even the world. 2022 is the first year of AI, 2024 is the first year of AI application, and 2025 will usher in the inflection point of AI application explosion. AI+ will inject development driving force into the home furnishing field. The big model has embarked on a new track of integration with the real industry, and the digital economy in the home furnishing field will thus stride into a period of comprehensive expansion.

Digital application: The "2024 Residential Industry Digital Application Development Research Report" points out that in the fierce competitive environment, digitalization has become an important tool for the home furnishing industry to transform and upgrade, reduce costs and increase efficiency. The home furnishing industry is digitally empowered and starting a new journey. How to implement technology is a research hotspot. Generative AI, as a new type of productivity, will be integrated with the real industry, expand boundaries, and explore new living scenarios where digital and reality coexist. This is the focus, such as: smart home health care, new virtual Vientiane scene experience, etc.

Intelligent good: People-oriented, intelligent good, represents the main line of artificial intelligence development. Embodied intelligence will inevitably become a trend to serve the diversified needs of home through deep learning. Ensuring the safe development of the digital future is an important indicator of consumer concern.

Intelligent aesthetics: Through minimalist integration of products such as hiding and embedding, linking different lifestyle scenarios, integrating technological elements into classics, and using sustainable materials and intelligent materials design is an inevitable trend. The intended colors of digital scenes mostly use surreal, mysterious, and dreamy hues, such as dark colors from blue-green to purple, or high-brightness colors from blue-green to pink-purple, or large-brightness color matching, such as dark purple and bright yellow. Digital iridescence, anodizing, metallization, and dyeing effects all enhance the material expression of the digital world.

In the plus era, the demand for harmonious coexistence and sustainable development between human beings and nature, society, culture and technology will become more and more obvious. Paying attention to the new lifestyle driven by technological development, creating symbiotic products, and satisfying the happiness of human behavior and spiritual needs will be an important path for the development of home design.