Home Design Trends for 2022 – What are the experts saying?
Is there a “best source” for predicting home design trends? If so, which is it? Do we listen to paint companies for color trends? What about furniture? Are manufacturers or dealers the best source for the shapes, styles, and fabrics homeowners are buying? Then there are floor coverings, wallcoverings, lighting, and window treatments. Who can you trust for expert advice when imagining and designing fresh spaces for your clients?
Perhaps more importantly, should you seek information about national, regional, or local trends in home design? Does it, or should it, even matter to you and your clients what designers are doing on the East or West Coasts?
In short, what are the experts saying about home design trends for 2022? And, does it matter for your design or furnishings business?
Most Expert Predictions Are Wrong
From politics and policy to the economy and stock market, and from technological to health predictions and, as all of us know – the weather – predictions of the future made by so-called “experts” are more often wrong than right. By a lot:
“Another scientist analyzed the accuracy of technology-trend predictions. About eighty percent of them were wrong, regardless of whether those predictions were made by experts or not.” (SmithsonianMag.com)
Further, “When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong for the right reasons. They have the same repertoire of self-justifications that everyone has, and are no more inclined than anyone else to revise their beliefs about the way the world works, or ought to work, just because they made a mistake.”
“Despite the constant demand for “expert predictions and analysis,” research shows these predictions are typically no more accurate than randomly generated guesses.” (Medium.com)
So, if expert predictions in virtually every field are wrong four out of five times, how can you know what will be popular in home design until after the fact?
Trust Yourself
All of this information is not designed to say that all experts are always wrong. Home design trends do exist and the sharp designer or dealer pays attention to them. However, translating opinion into intention may not mean you should take a specific action. Why? Because experts carry their own biases (including you):
“Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows one’s focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance.” (SmithsonianMag.com)
Ultimately, you must trust yourself to offer your clients choices that will make it possible to live and/or work in the spaces that feel right to them. Your training and experience should be used to analyze what the experts are telling you, just as listening to your clients should guide you.
With all of this in mind, we will be presenting you with a selection of home design trends in the next couple of posts in this series. So, stay tuned for more ideas that should be taken with a grain of salt (or skepticism).
Until then, Ted is available to help you use your expertise, combined with his knowledge of the industry, to develop home design trends specific to your market that will benefit your business. Get in touch with TD Fall today.