How Digital Aesthetics are Influencing Home Decor in 2024
The digital arts, from generative AI to virtual world-building, are having a profound impact on the design of the world around us. This reflects a need for escapist futurism and dreamlike states where things can, and will, be different.
So why is this important? How should product and interior design respond? And how do we blend innovation with homeliness?
This theme is a central principle to our forecasts for 2024, which were published back in 2022. Generative AI was still a maven (innovator) concept at that early stage. However, we were able to see signs of rising interest in digital artistry and a cultural excitement about digital worlds that would pave the way for this technology once it was more established. Youth culture was also a key factor, where an uplifting approach to physical environments reflects a refusal of what came before paired with a hunger for creation.
The impact of digital design in the intervening 18-24 months has been to create new perspectives and narratives. Firstly, offering more immersive ways to reimagine the world (or new worlds) and secondly by the creation of tools that democratise creativity, offering fresh opportunities for self-expression.
Our Spring Summer 2024 trend concept, Avatar Lounge, explores the impact this digital influence has on physical spaces and product design.
Avatar Lounge
Entering the Avatar Lounge, consumers indulge in distraction, drawn to escapist digital environments and creating any scrap of optimism they can. The result is a sense of playfulness at home. A bend towards digital aesthetics in decor and colour usage, a desire for escapism and possibility, and a blending of surfaces with hard and soft materials that hints at digital surrealism. 
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“This futuristic story is less about standing at the edge of the unknown and more about the playful joy of infinite possibility. Web3, the Metaverse and AI concepts bring hope and escapism when the real world is full of fear and restriction.”
Naomi Pollard, Head of Publications
Virtual Brights
As digitally-inspired shades begin to move into real world products, the key to making these feel approachable will be balance and contrast.
For the colour palette here, gentle desaturated pastels and mid-tones form a crucial base, from which more radiant nuances of Super Pink and Green Flash can glow, creating unexpected contrast and hinting at a digital luminescence.
Application is also crucial. Strong saturated shades work exceptionally well in glass, resin and translucent mediums whilst gentler limes and pastels update plastics and paints. 
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Gently Digital Home Decor
Futuristic yet welcoming, this story provides the ultimate in escapism. Homemakers create fun, surreal spaces to lift the spirits. Decor blends solid with fluid. Furniture and appliances are looped, spherical, or have chubby, bubble-like structures, reflecting a long-range shift towards more rounded forms.
For homeware designers, materiality should be a focus. Translucence, reflection and rippled and ridged surface textures all add an instant facelift to existing products. Packaging designers can really experiment with the bolder expressions of this trend, from digital artworks to stronger colour pops and playful metallic and synthetic storage options. 
Mattis Obermann, Studio Chacha, Patricia Bustos, Yasmin Tamara Mevisson, Martina Claeson
