8 Interior Design Trends for 2021

Discover how our homes will look next year: the return of long-gone pieces of furniture, the new role of industrial designers, and the unexpected role of walls

Juan Pablo Fuentes studied industrial design at Diego Portales University in Chile in the late 1990s. Since then, he has founded several studios and built his own design space, COMODO, the first in Chile dedicated to producing, manufacturing, and marketing the so-called new national design. He was also the School of Design's director at the University of the Americas, which connected him to Latin America and Europe's design world.

As a designer, @juanpablofuentes can study every aspect of an object: aesthetic, functional, economic, and social. His work enriches this skill at the editorial project Nuevos Creativos Chilenos, through which he focuses on product design, clothing, and graphics. His global vision is also nourished by the National Design Space, the first design gallery in Chile, a place that he shares with other partners and to promote, disseminate, and market serialized or limited design pieces sourced from local talent.

We talked to Juan Pablo about the unexpected changes brought by 2020 and the interior design trends coming in 2021. This is what he sees on the horizon.

1. It will be a good year for industrial designers

2020 was a terrible year in many ways, but it has brought great opportunities for industrial design. In Latin America, this has translated into distinct forms of expression. People made an abrupt change of mentality. They realized that to respond to their new needs, standardized products do not always work. That, added to an atrocious shortage in the furniture industry, caused many to go straight to professionals, without third parties or distributors.

Yes, this was the year in which an industrial designer was able to enter the dialogue with people who wanted simple things. A sofa or a bed respond to basic needs such as the measurements of their homes, their budget, and certain functions that they discovered they needed during the pandemic. In that process, many of us have lost the fear: the fear of being expensive, of being problematic or pretentious. We discovered that we could give service to ordinary people. In short, we got into their homes.

2. Functionality paves the way

If there is one thing we understood this year, it is that "useful" is more important than "nice." Many of us were looking for our houses to look nice, like in the magazines, but we hadn't thought about whether that chair served to sit for hours or if the table was the ideal height to be comfortable doing many things at once. We liked the idea of living in a hotel and, of course, living in a hotel is nice but because you are on vacation and have nothing to do! Our furniture has to follow our routine, not be an obstacle. They are also crucial in preserving our health. Considerations such as the position in which we sit became important.

3. Return of abandoned pieces

There are some furniture pieces that we considered dead but will make a comeback in 2021. Remote working, and the need to find new spaces now that we spend more time at home, is bringing back essential pieces for the new dynamics of our personal spaces.

4. The trundle bed

We are talking about those beds from which another one slides out. They will become fundamental because they allow us to welcome people at home or give assistance to an acquaintance who can no longer pay his rent, for example. This happened a lot in Latin America due to the economic crisis that the pandemic aggravated. In Europe, it never quite stopped being used, but in Chile, the sofa bed also made a comeback, with the same connotation.

5. The desk

In this region, where remote work is not that common, we used to see desks as something our grandparents had, a piece of furniture that gathered dust and hid unused objects in its drawers. The desk is now back with different, more compact, small forms, adaptable to other spaces and ages.

6. The high benches

High benches made no sense until we realized that they serve us to sit in a different position after hours of working or watching TV shows, and as a high side table. They are also simple decoration pieces if we set them in a nice corner with some books stacked.

7. We will reconsider movable furniture

There is a clear example of this: at the end of last year, the French studio Bouroullec designed The Serif for Samsung, a TV that was not very successful because it was a little ahead of its time. Everything changed in a matter of months. What is so special about it? Instead of being a huge screen you hang on a wall like a painting, this is a super thin and light TV, with legs to move around the house, more like a blackboard than a TV. The invention, which was received with suspicion initially, made much more sense during the pandemic. It is very comfortable and functional to move the screen with us to watch the news and inform us of what is happening, work next to our PCs, or even for Zoom presentations. I use it this way, and it's much more fun than screen sharing.

8. Walls tell stories

Zoom, Google Meets, and other virtual meeting spaces created a new dimension in which we must work to project our image. Suddenly, many people were interested in acquiring works of art, ornaments, and plants that fit into the frame during video calls, now an indispensable tool to get new customers or meet with bosses and coworkers.

A lot has happened in this space. It might sound bizarre and look like a joke, but Amazon even sells a set that simulates a bookshelf full of interesting books, and it is a success. This decorated wall trend will become official in 2021 and we are going to design our walls much more carefully, as an extension of our inner self.

In his Domestika course Furniture and Object Design for Beginners, Juan Pablo explains the essential tools for designing furniture and decorative objects and basic notions of industrial design that will allow you to better understand these trends.

English version by @angeljimenez

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