Somewhere between the pandemic’s extended indoor life and a growing fatigue with mass-market sameness, home design moved in a clear direction: more personal, more tactile, more rooted in nature and craft. The trends that architects and interior designers identified heading into 2022 — compiled from designer surveys and expert interviews published by Dwell in December 2021 — were not entirely new arrivals. They were the culmination of several years of quiet accumulation, finally reaching the point where they were visible enough to name.
Five threads ran through the predictions: biophilic living, reclaimed and sustainable materials, earthy surface textures, handcrafted objects, and wavy or curved geometry. Each one says something specific about how residents at the time were rethinking what a home should feel like — and together they sketch a living environment that pushed back hard against disposability and visual uniformity.
The Trend: Nature, Craft and Texture Take Centre Stage
Jean Lin, founder of Colony, a New York City design cooperative and gallery representing independent furniture and object designers, described the mood clearly: “There is a movement against the big-box retailers that pushes back on the homogenisation of our homes and design in general. We are settling for what’s readily available less and less — and seeking out our most expressive and genuine lives at home.”
Interior designer Andee Hess, principal of Osmose Design in Portland, Oregon, framed it as a confidence shift: “We are living in the future where individuality and confidence rule.” These were not fringe opinions. The 1stDibs Interior Designer Trends Survey, published December 2021, surveyed 750 interior designers from the platform’s trade programme and found that roughly 97 percent said sustainable materials would dominate in 2022. A separate Pinterest Predicts 2022 report — analysing searches on the platform between October 2019 and September 2021 — recorded a 150 percent increase in searches for “biophilic architecture” during that period, with related terms including “staircase garden” and “floral ceiling” also rising sharply.
Where These Trends Appeared in Real Homes
The five trends were not theoretical. They showed up in documented residential projects across the United States and further afield.
Biophilic interiors moved well beyond houseplants. A Brooklyn Bedford-Stuyvesant townhouse renovated by Civilian Projects — the studio founded by architects Nicko Elliott and Ksenia Kagner — used Benjamin Moore’s Cedar Path green on its garden-level den walls, connecting the interior palette directly to the outdoor environment. Separately, a family home built near Kongsberg, Norway, placed the entire structure inside an enormous greenhouse structure, with jungle-inspired wallpaper in one of the bathrooms.
Reclaimed materials appeared prominently in a renovation by Brooklyn firm GRT Architects of a 1962 home in New York’s Hudson Valley. The existing 102-foot-long structural beams were sanded and treated with a natural wax finish rather than replaced; the original terra-cotta tile floors needed only a clean. Phoenix practice The Ranch Mine built a staircase and dining table from a silk oak tree found on the project site itself — a decision that, in the words of principal Cavin Costello, “created a relationship with the lot” while also controlling the budget.
Earthy surface textures arrived in a 4,167-square-foot Brooklyn brownstone renovated by Frederick Tang Architecture, where the living room fireplace received a custom Venetian plaster finish — a material choice Tang described as both durable and water-resistant, and one he expected to start appearing on outdoor surfaces and even custom furniture.
Craft-influenced furnishings featured in a Portland, Oregon, Tudor renovation by Osmose Design, where the kitchen was fitted with curved white oak cabinetry, handmade Fireclay Tile from California, and a butcher-block island incorporating a piece carved by local wood sculptor Vince Skelly.
Wavy geometry appeared in a renovated 1890s Melbourne home where the kitchen island was curved and built from recycled wood, with a brass rail and wooden ladder reaching ceiling-height storage. A Brooklyn loft in a 1929 Art Deco building repeated a curve motif across ceiling soffits, a kitchen backsplash, and a living room bar with a Calacatta Macchia Vecchia marble countertop.
How to Use These Ideas in a Home
Each trend operates at a different level of commitment and cost, which is worth distinguishing clearly.
- Biophilic elements range from low-cost (potted plants, botanical-print fabric, green-toned paint) to structural (living walls, greenhouse additions, floor-to-ceiling glazing onto a garden). Paint brands including Benjamin Moore, Farrow & Ball, and Sherwin-Williams all included green shades in their 2022 colour forecasts, making wall colour an accessible entry point.
- Reclaimed and sustainable materials can enter at the renovation stage — retaining original floors, beams or tiles rather than replacing them — or through furniture sourcing: vintage, antique and second-hand pieces rather than new production runs. Lin noted that the 2020–2021 period had seen a rush toward utility-driven purchasing; the correction was toward longevity and “timelessly chic and functional” furnishings.
- Earthy textures work best applied to large surfaces — walls, fireplaces, ceilings — where plaster, lime wash or clay finishes create a tactile quality that paint alone cannot. Tang noted that raked plaster and grainy stuccos were beginning to move from interior walls to outdoor surfaces and custom millwork.
- Craft objects are most effective as a curation strategy rather than a single purchase. Elliott and Kagner suggested focusing on display — vestibules, libraries, pantries and dressing rooms as settings for object collections — with throne-like chairs, large candlesticks, rustic linen, quilts and heavily textured ceramics as specific categories to look for.
- Curved forms work across scales: a curved kitchen island or bar is a significant project, but a rounded sofa, arched mirror or undulating backsplash tile can introduce the motif without structural changes. Tang identified millwork and stone backsplash detailing as the next areas where the wavy motif would expand.
Materials and Design Logic Behind Each Direction
The material choices that ran through these trends were not arbitrary. Each had a functional or philosophical rationale alongside its visual appeal.
Reclaimed wood and stone were specifically named by Isabelle Dubern-Mallevays and Anna Zaoui, co-founders of The Invisible Collection — a curated online platform and showroom for designer furniture — as the reclaimed materials they expected to appear most in both architecture and interiors. The appeal is partly environmental and partly aesthetic: salvaged timber and stone carry visible history that new materials cannot replicate.
Plaster, clay and lime wash were identified by Tang as durable, water-resistant and adaptable — qualities that justify their higher application cost compared with standard paint. They also age differently, developing a patina that Costello of The Ranch Mine described through the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi: “a combination of the handmade and materials meant to patina over time.”
Handcraft in upholstery extended to decorative edge details — ruffles, pleats, tassels and ball fringes — that Tang argued could feel playful rather than stuffy when paired with bolder colours and patterns. This was a direct departure from the minimalist upholstery dominant in Scandinavian-influenced interiors of the preceding decade.
Green as a chromatic material operated across wallpaper (flora and fauna patterns), paint (everything from cabinet accents to full room walls), and fabric — functioning as a signal of biophilic intent even in spaces where live plants were not practical.
GRT Architects’ Tal Schori and Rustam-Marc Mehta added a structural dimension: the move toward reclaimed materials was inseparable from a broader shift toward improving existing buildings rather than constructing new ones — adaptive reuse as the design default rather than the exception.
What to Consider Before Committing to These Directions
These trends were identified heading into 2022, based on designer surveys and platform data available at that time. The Pinterest data covered October 2019 to September 2021; the 1stDibs survey was published in December 2021. Treating them as a current snapshot would be inaccurate — they are better understood as a record of where residential design thinking was moving at a particular cultural moment, some of which will have continued and some of which will have evolved or faded.
Several practical considerations apply regardless of timing:
- Reclaimed materials require sourcing effort. Finding salvaged timber, stone or tiles of the right quality and quantity for a project takes longer than ordering new stock, and availability varies significantly by region.
- Plaster and lime wash finishes are not low-maintenance. They are durable, but specialist application and occasional repair are part of the long-term cost. The visual payoff justifies this for many homeowners; the ongoing commitment should be factored in from the start.
- Craft and vintage sourcing does not scale easily. The appeal of handmade and one-of-a-kind pieces is their scarcity. Decorating primarily through this channel requires patience, a flexible timeline and the ability to live with an incomplete room while waiting for the right piece.
- Biophilic features require ongoing care. Live plants, living walls and garden-facing design all depend on light conditions, maintenance time and climate. What works in a Norway greenhouse home or a Brooklyn garden-level den will not automatically transfer to a high-rise apartment or a north-facing room.
- Trend-driven decisions carry a durability question. Lin’s argument for longevity cuts both ways: if the goal is furnishings and materials that outlast a trend cycle, the selection process should be based on personal resonance rather than what was being predicted at any given moment.
The homes documented in this body of work — renovation projects in Brooklyn, Portland, Melbourne and Norway — share one quality: each was shaped by a clear point of view rather than by trend compliance alone. That is perhaps the more durable instruction. The specific materials and motifs will shift; the underlying approach of building a home around individual character, sustainable choices and objects made with skill is harder to date.
