Top 10 Interior Design Trends from Milan

Last week I was invited to a media night for Sklar Furnishings. The owners, Pat and Rick Howard, hold a special part in my heart since they are great supporters of my favorite charities including Junior League of Boca Raton. They had just returned from market in Milan and High Point North Carolina. After learning about their green showroom, their design services and seeing transforming furniture pieces we learned about the top interior design trends. Today I am sharing the Interior Design Trends from Milan.

Interior Design Trends from Milan

The Milan Salone del Mobile 2017 is the biggest furniture fair in the world. It kicked off on Tuesday April 4th in Milan with hundreds of Designers and Retailers. The owners of Sklar Furnishings attended and shared with us the top trends.

1. Color of the Year

The Pantone color of the year is green they expected to see it everywhere. They were surprised to see green only from a very few vendors. Green ranged from spring green to a very deep hunter green. I was excited to hear that blue is still very prominent, since it is my favorite design color. Some vendors continued to pair it with the brown and caramel from 2016 but the majority had moved into the grey tones.

Top 10 Interior Design Trends from Milan by Happy Family Blog

2. Bunching tables

Combining multiple tables to make a cocktail or end table remained on trend. The tables are usually varying is size, shape, materials and heights. They create a wonderful visual in any room. This year they mixed in fabric ottomans as well. Round was very popular but we also saw lots of squares. They are both meant to double as seating and are indeed very good at doing just that!

3. Metal finishes

Metals continued to be on trend. This year as well as gold and bronze, Titanium was a new metal finish. A few years ago market started moving away from chrome and introducing finishes such as black chrome, gold and rose gold. Metals were often used on small parts of the piece. For example feet on a sofa, the base of a table or the handles on cases goods. More importantly manufactures introduced whole pieces like buffets and cocktail tables. Interestingly it is very neutral and not overpowering to the rest of the room.

4. Outdoor furniture

Outdoor furniture has come a long way from the mesh seating. Now because of the perfection of performance fabrics the outdoor furniture looks exactly like your indoor furniture. Leather--yes leather and wood products that are meant for full outdoors. It looks so good you cannot believe it is designed as outdoor furniture.

5. Traditional triangle

Triangles transformed to extended and much softer with rounded edges. The rounded edges work well in a group of bunching tables or as an end table. The stretching and softening of the sides gives a much larger space which everyone loves.

6. Glass Marble

This is a fabulous new man-made product. It is a process of stamping glass with a pattern taken directly from a sheet of marble. This does several things--- it means that every table will be exactly the same so what you see in the showroom is what your piece will look like. It also means we should have less damage---marble is very fragile and there is traditionally a lot of breakage. Glass marble product has not been named officially but the few vendors we saw exhibiting it were calling it mar glass or glass marble. More to come on this trend.

7. Sahara Nero

Every year there is at least one product that is "everywhere" and this year proved to be no different. A new marble called Sahara Nero was in almost every showroom. It has a black background with random lines of white and caramel and we saw it in polished and matte. You can use it on every surface you can imagine from the ordinary like table tops to the unusual like fronts of buffets. It's very versatile and worked well paired with black, brown, taupe and white soft goods. When grey was in the lighter end of the color spectrum the marble paired nicely with it too.

8. Love Seats

A fun and efficient trend was the use of love seats around a dining or pub table. Usually it was on one side only which gave a very nice look. Banquet seating was also popular, which may be geared more to the European market because of their smaller homes.

9. The Occasional Chair

It is clear that vendors concentrated their R&D dollars on creating new occasional chairs. The occasional chair designs range from architectural to functional. The chairs are comfortable and designed to compliment almost any style of decor you already have. This is a great way to freshen up your space without a large expense.

10. Lighting

Light is very dramatic and will definitely play a large roll in completely any look you are trying to achieve. Euroluce, the lighting show ran at the same time. Very large chandeliers dominated and many of them looked like pieces of art as well as what they were. Several of the companies had fun and whimsical lighting including one of a full size mannequin swinging on the light. There is no doubt due to the proximity of the island of Murano glass many vendors used this gorgeous glass in their products.