Italian Interior Design Trends
A love of fine craftsmanship and luxury is deeply embedded in the Italian DNA. And when it comes to their homes, Italians certainly don’t hold back. With an obsessive eye for detail, every piece of furniture in an Italian-style home will be a love letter to timeless design, where every fabric and finish is selected with purpose and reasoning.
Following the biggest annual design event in the world, Milan Design Week 2022 (June 6th – 12th), here are some of the most common design elements being incorporated in the Italian Design Culture, as well as their creators’ new take attempting to redefine the world of Italian Interior Design as we previously knew it.
Fratelli Boffi’s booth at Salone del Mobile showcased rust-colored upholstery.
The BOUCLÉ Evolution
Bouclé refers to a type of yarn, made from a series of looped fiber, or the fabric made from it. Wool is the most common fiber to undergo the technique, though cotton, linen, and silk have also been used to achieve the same textured hand. We see Bouclé being applied on a neutral tone mostly in household fabric furniture like the sofa to give off that effortless lux feel in the living room.
For Milan Design Week 2022, Fratelli Boffi recreated a whole new atmosphere with their ingenious use of the fabric on other elements of our daily living. Introducing new styles, bolder, nature-inspired hues and a new mix of textures, Fratelli Boffi grandly launched a new generation of the Bouclé application, and it won’t be long before we see interior design companies snatching up this exquisite piece of design, maximizing comfort.
Sabine Marcelis and OMA teamed up with natural stone company SolidNature on this stunning exhibition at Alcova.
Stone Cold Stunner
Unique stone surfaces are a major trend in Italian home designs. The use of bright, bold layers of colors capitalizes on minimalism, subtlety yet with a loud attitude. The art piece created by OMA, Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis and SolidNature observed at Alcova, was a stunning, sophisticated one. The exhibition, made from 9 different slabs of polychromatic onyx, can undoubtley be regarded as the true jewel of the Design Week.
A lavish display of polished stones and their makers, this innovative piece made even more clear that stone needn’t be just a surface, but a venue for experimentation and a symbol of status. We will witness to bolder use of colors, mixtures and layers of natural and non-natural stone slabs being applied to modern interior design, and more surprises awaits in the world of Interior Design.
Tom Dixon celebrated his brand’s 20th birthday with a Mirror-Ball Chandelier.
Mirrors & Shine
The use of reflections has always been more than just utilitarian in Italian Design Culture. Tom Dixon, in celebrating his 20th Birthday, created a reflection masterpiece with a fully chromed out Mirror-Ball Chandelier as the center of attention at his booth. Reflections and layered elements were also spread out across other exhibitions such Dior’s classic Medallion chai, and Flavie Audi’s sculptural mirrors at the Nilufar Gallery.
Well there you have it, Italian Interior Design can bring about exclusive luxury, yet sophisticated subtleties. And as we see more and more homes adapting to this trendsetting culture, building upon large formats of layering, stone cladding, pristine fabric, and the use of reflections and shine, with such an evolution it’s only natural to wonder: what will come next?
