- Home trend for 2012: mobile@home meets natural materials
- Furniture trend for 2012: Round shapes instead of corners and edges
(Photo: imm cologne 2011)
It's a pattern we're all familiar with: partying with our friends in the kitchen until the early hours, and only using the living room for drinking tea and reading a good book on cosy evenings with our partners. In former times, things were different. The kitchen was used only to prepare meals, which were taken together with guests in the elegant dining room. After the meal, the entire group would move to the living room, where the rest of the evening was spent sitting on the comfortable sofa - smoking cigars, of course.
But our changing expectations regarding home design have now also changed the way we apportion space. There are hardly any closed rooms in a modern home. Areas that used to be strictly separate are now blending into one another and leaving their traditional functions behind. Today people no longer ask themselves what kinds of things belong in the living room - instead, they decide what they want to do in the space they define as their living room. The old "either/or" model is clearly being replaced with "both this and that". Anything is possible, and people can express every facet of their personality in their own home.
For example, in terms of where to place items of furniture the traditional boundaries are becoming blurred. Nowadays we place the TV in the kitchen, make an open-plan kitchen into a communication centre with a dining table and dining armchairs, and equip the bedroom with a bathtub. Old furniture is combined with new acquisitions, barbecuing can be done in the winter, and if people feel like it, the hallway can become a disco. This sense of freedom within one's own four walls offers lots of opportunities to develop an individual identity and an independent sense of design.
Recent studies demonstrate that the home is becoming a focus of social life, increasingly replacing the custom of meeting in pubs and restaurants. People like to meet their friends at home to share meals, talk or play games. For that, you of course need good-looking, individualistic furniture and a pleasant atmosphere that makes people feel at home. This trend can also be seen in the amounts of money people spend on furniture in Germany. For roughly the last decade, we have been spending more and more on furniture every year. In 2011 Germans spent an average of ¤373 per capita on furniture, not counting the amount spent for accessories and decorative items. And these figures are increasing in spite of the country's shrinking population.
Communication is a major trend, and it will continue to be important in the future. Just about everyone has a smart phone, a netbook or a tablet computer. Along with the possibility of 24/7 communication, these devices also offer constant access to information. People are looking up more things on the Internet than ever before, and there's no end in sight. That also applies to furniture and interior design. Whether it's ideas, manufacturers, designers or information about materials, people are now checking out all this information for themselves. As a result, when these well-informed customers enter a furniture store, they are of course much more savvy and self-confident. That's reason enough for some furniture producers to make sizable investments in qualification programmes for their sales personnel at the trade outlets. Training sessions organized by furniture manufacturers have become a matter of course.
Germany has over 40.3 million households - more than ever before. Of these, 16.2 million are single households, which means they make up the largest group. As a rule, singles live in smaller living units and therefore need furniture that is multifunctional and has added value.
Accordingly, modern furniture fulfils many functions simultaneously. In general, items of furniture are once again becoming smaller, so that they can be used in many ways. For example, because sofas are now easy to move around, it's easy to create more floor space. Desks need only a small worktop because technological devices are being miniaturized, and display cabinets can be narrow because LED lights and storage media no longer need a lot of space. For example, flexible seating is provided by pouffes that can be moved around within an apartment and fit in everywhere. Tables can be extended in a few simple steps when friends come for dinner. Flatscreens are hidden away in the sideboard via remote controls.
The main trend of the coming season will be "Pimp My Home." The possibilities for creative design are greatest in one's own home. There are plenty of accessories and interior decoration ideas that make it possible to continue beautifying one's own four walls even on a small budget. An increasing number of furniture producers are also going with this new trend, presenting bold new designs that appeal to enthusiastic consumers in an increasingly individualized market.
In the run-up to imm cologne 2012 the Association of the German Furniture Industry conducted a trend survey among the exhibitors, as it has done in previous years as well. The following section presents only the most important trends and currents in the furniture and interior design sector for the new 2012 season.
Good design and good quality are basic priorities for all new furniture, as a matter of course. People look at both the appearance and the materials of a piece of furniture. Neither is paramount - it's the combination of the two that has to be just right. People don't like to make compromises here. In the past, consumers tended to be carried away by the look of furniture and didn't pay too much attention to quality and functionality. Today, well-informed customers apply both criteria to products in every price range. Apropos price: even though the average sales prices of furniture have increased in recent years, that hasn't stopped people from buying. When it comes to furniture "Made in Germany", people expect top design and quality. That's an excellent point of departure. In fact, it's almost a marketing profile that German furniture manufacturers could make their own when they run advertising campaigns abroad.
A megatrend that is just entering the furnishings sector is the emphasis on natural materials. It would be hard to imagine a more striking contrast: on the one hand, people are living with high tech in miniaturized formats; on the other, they are increasingly buying natural products for their own four walls. Untreated wood, furniture made of used wood such as old ship planks, felt-covered seating, genuine moss for wall decorations, cork flooring, wooden bathtubs, pressed grasses in the glass walls of shower stalls, the increased use of leather as a furniture covering, animal skins, wooden floors - whatever it is, customers want natural, genuine and authentic materials. And of course they have to look ultramodern. Thanks to bionics, natural forms have become models for construction designs. This trend can be seen in honeycomb panels and in the entire area of lightweight construction, the puffed-up shapes of seat shells, or simply the visual models taken from nature. Customers are looking for authentic materials in all furniture segments. They want materials like wood, glass and stone - genuine natural materials without any hint of industrial production.
Upholstered furniture is getting smaller, but its various functions are remaining the same. Folding it in or out and thus changing the original purpose is both practical and fun. Furniture shapes are becoming much rounder, as rounded corners look more harmonious, welcoming and appealing.
Wall units have become standard equipment. Highboards, lowboards and display cabinets that can be assembled from separate modules offer the right combination for every taste. This is where most people place their flatscreens. Wall units are not deep, so they help to create a sense of ample space.
Colours are the very stuff of life, surrounding us wherever we look. People's desire for saturated colours has not yet peaked. We can expect to see strong monos in the coming season. Purple will become even more popular, and blue will once again be acceptable in the living room. White furniture will continue to be popular, because white can be combined effectively with every other colour. Incidentally, nature also offers a broad palette of colours that can justifiably be called "natural colours": sky blue, meadow green, sunset red and lavender, to name just a few.
We'll also be seeing lots of colour in the patterns of upholstery materials. Whether they consist of stripes, zigzags, floral motifs or abstract shapes, the patterns will be very colourful. For all materials, a pleasant texture will play an important role. Many fabrics will no longer be smooth but instead will have a raised structure that is pleasant and inviting to the touch.
There will be lots of oak wherever you look. We'll be seeing this good German wood in tables, beds, cupboards and flooring. Oak has long been a traditional favourite; it's genuinely valuable and indestructible. Walnut will retain its popularity, because it looks expensive and elegant. Customers are finding it increasingly important to use local woods, including fruitwood. At the lighter end of the colour scale we'll be seeing beech, maple, ash, alder and birch.
LED technology has gone through extremely varied phases in the past decade. It was initially so expensive that it had no real market opportunities. However, its success story very clearly illustrates how economic processes work: optimized supply sources and growing demand made the technology cheaper, enabling it to achieve a degree of market maturity that has hugely expanded its areas of application. Other drivers include the anticipated energy revolution as a political background and, of course, the gradual withdrawal of conventional light bulbs from the market.
A quick and dramatic market success for LED technology is anticipated. And the market maturity of LED technology has of course also inspired furniture designers to use LEDs in furniture construction as well. Energy-efficient light sources that create a particular atmosphere - and in many cases are hidden so as to produce a magical lighting effect - are a top trend that will be with us in the coming years. The latest driver of this trend is the development of OLEDs - organic light-emitting diodes - that generate surface lighting and are posing a new challenge to developers and designers.
A noticeable trend is the turn toward high-quality products in all segments. This growing quality-consciousness seems to be related to people's critical questioning of the throwaway society that has been dominant for decades. This trend is reinforced by people's increasing sensitivity to the world's shrinking natural resources, the discussion of climate change, the question of how to feed the world's growing population, and a general awareness of the environment and nature in general.
Finally, the major furniture-producing countries of Europe have to join forces against the new competitors from Asia, and above all China. This means they have to focus on design, quality and innovation rather than price. It's thus crucial that European furniture retains its first-class image. Otherwise, it will be impossible to remain fit for the future in a globalized world.
Further Information: imm cologne 2012
Source: Ursula Geismann, Association of the German Furniture Industries (Verband der Deutschen Möbelindustrie)