The Top 9 Interior Design Trends for 2024

IMPERFECTIONISTS, REJOICE. Sean Scherer and other professionals in the realm of aesthetics see interior design embracing flaws in 2022. The founder of curiosity shop Kabinett & Kammer, in Franklin, N.Y., cites a surging interest in chipped and crazed ironstone china as an example. “In the past, people wanted pure white and pristine,” he said. Now his customers are hankering for the opposite—a “timeworn and cozy feel.” Sleek, mass-made items and chilly finishes like glass are being ghosted. Instead, people are gravitating toward handmade finishes, plantlike paint colours and friendly architectural curves. “We are dying for warmth, coziness and colouurs that make us feel grounded,” said Los Angeles designer Peti Lau, who observes cool tones’ fading fast. Here, the incoming trends that were highlighted most often by the hundreds of designers we polled—as well as those they believe are bowing out.

OUT: Fancy Tile

While hand-painted floor tiles seemed charming not so long ago, the colourful quadrilaterals won’t be a big part of the finishes arsenal in 2022, predicted Charlotte, N.C., interior designer Gray Walker. “The line between indoors and outdoors will continue blurring,” and such ornamentation is too busy to jibe with the simplicity of the natural world, she said. Mosaic floors, too, had their moment, said Brooklyn-based architect Adam Meshberg, “until people started spending more time at home and opted for serene spaces that were easy on the eyes.”

IN: Wood Laid in Patterns

Classic, ornamental herringbone wood floors are zigzagging into interiors, even contemporary ones. The look “adds a timeless, textural touch in modern rooms,” said Sara Cukerbaum, principal designer at Austin, Texas, firm SLIC Design, who has recently employed herringbone in white oak and ebony-stained oak. Ms. Walker appreciates herringbone’s twofer contribution: “You get the beauty of a pattern and the warmth of wood.”

OUT: Big-Stitch Blankets

Those throws wrought of extremely thick yarn are so commonplace they’ve become aesthetically smothering. “The machine-made, chunky-yarn blankets are more suited for a football stadium than someone’s home,” said Washington, D.C., designer Josh Hildreth, who adds that mass-produced items make a space feel staged rather than lived in.

IN: Well-Woven Wraps

“Hand-loomed blankets are in because of their organic, natural imperfections,” Mr. Hildreth said. “The yarns are typically hand dyed and also have a richness of colour.” And those tossed-on coverlets make an impact. “When you think of a room in layers, the outermost layers are what you see first, creating an immediate impression,” he added. Los Angeles design pro Susan Taylor, of Davis Taylor Design, often reaches for the Scottish lamb’s wool weaves of Paulette Rollo (shown), “because they look more artisan and handmade.”

OUT: Teensy Pendant Lights

Little dangling lights, even multiples of them, in large rooms have lost their lustre for Newport Beach, Calif., designer Raili Clasen. “In spaces with voluminous ceilings, small light fixtures get swallowed up,” she said. Ms. Clasen clusters wee pendants in powder rooms, but in most spaces, fixtures under 36 inches no longer appeal to her. Interior designer Shannon Palmer, in Rancho Mirage, Calif., noted that he still welcomes small pendants made of interestingly blown glass or even rope or raffia, but “clients are leaving the simple, ‘techy’ frosted glass and cable pendants behind.”

IN: Titanic Fixtures

Illumination is no longer a chandelier’s sole reason for being. Designers bring the drama with pieces like the Moooi Random Light II (shown), a fiberglass orb available in diameters up to 41.3 inches. “[Oversized fixtures] become a major art piece and define the personality of the space,” said Ms. Clasen. In the room with which this story begins, Kyiv, Ukraine, architect Serhii Makhno grouped the Khmara ceramic pendants he designed. Besides the direct function of the fixtures, the largest of which is nearly 50 inches across, he said, they create “a wow factor in any interior.”

OUT: Boxy Blackened-Steel Frames

In 2021’s trend report, we confidently sent the modern farmhouse style, with its white clapboard and dark window frames, out to pasture. Its trademark blackened-steel details have nevertheless persisted in many forms of design, but Kim Armstrong, a designer in Rockwall, Texas, predicts their inappropriate application will wane. “In my area of Dallas I see so many people with 1960s-1980s brick homes installing windows with black frames,” she said. “It shouldn’t be used in every renovation or new build on the block.”

IN: Bendy Lines

Arches—in both cabinetry and architecture—are rounding the corner to sate our need for “softer lines and more comforting designs,” said Ms. Armstrong. In the Winnetka, Ill., house shown above, designer Mark Lavender emphasized broad hallway arches, which he said give a “great sense of space,” by adorning the surrounding walls in a strict, contrasting grid of plaid. Even in a comparatively calm and simple interior, arches make a statement, said designer Lindye Galloway, of Costa Mesa, Calif., who recently tucked a vaulted niche into a client’s tiled shower wall.

OUT: The Reign of Cane

Although Ms. Taylor loves the lightness of the handwoven cabinet-fronts occasionally found on vintage furniture, the island-time material “crescendoed during the pandemic by appearing everywhere.” A little goes a long way. Erin Gates, in Wellesley, Mass., still likes a traditional rattan accent piece here and there but finds the boho “all rattan all the time” approach as faded as an old Hawaiian shirt. “It’s also kind of uncomfortable,” she said of caned seating, “and 2022 is all about finding the blend between comfort and fashion.”

IN: Ribs and Flutes

Those professionals designing luxury residences are adding ribbed-wood detailing to walls, kitchen cabinetry, bathrooms and more, said Mr. Meshberg. (File under “and more” the slatted-beechwood credenza above, by Mexican studio Peca, available at 1stdibs.com. ) Also having a revival: similarly linear fluting, a descendant of the vertical grooves that characterized columns in the better homes and gardens of ancient Rome. Today, fluting introduces visual intrigue “without adding true pattern,” said designer Laetitia Laurent, of Laure Nell Interiors in Boca Raton, Fla. It “strikes that balance of simple yet interesting.”

OUT: Routine Mass-Produced Wallpaper

While design experts largely agreed that wallcoverings are still salable, papering rooms with generic “fast fashion” iterations—especially soulless graphic patterns—won’t turn any heads, said designer Kristen Peña, of K Interiors in San Francisco. “Wallpaper isn’t just a substitute for paint anymore,” said Batya Stepelman, a consultant and owner of WallTawk in Denver. “Many people I work with see it as large-format art, and they don’t want the same piece as their neighbour.”

IN: Walls You Want to Touch

Our yen for contact and cocooning has got tactility climbing the walls. Plastered surfaces, like those in the Spanish colonial living room above, which Los Angeles designer Jake Arnold recently revamped, straddles two seemingly opposing aesthetics: Plaster is “very organic, yet rich,” he said. New York designer Lauren Behfarin predicts we’ll see lots of chalky lime wash, with its subtle texture and intrigue. Plaster paint can supply the blotchy optics without the expense of the real trowel-it-on stuff, said Ms. Galloway.

OUT: Made-to-Order Furniture

Supply-chain snarls are causing exasperating delays when it comes to having anything but in-stock merchandise delivered. “Larger furniture pieces in general seem to have the longest lead times,” said San Antonio, Texas, designer Alison Giese, who has encountered 28-week lead times when ordering upholstered sofas and chairs for clients. “I personally ordered some patio chairs last April, and I just received word that the new expected delivery date is March 2022.”

IN: Ye Olde Goodes

“Antiques are available and sold right off the floor,” enthused Sheldon Harte, of interior design firm Harte Brownlee in Laguna Beach, Calif., one of the many design pros we polled who said that shipping woes associated with new furniture have bolstered their appreciation of vintage pieces. Attic finds qualify, too. “Many clients are digging up family heirlooms and opting to use these in interesting ways,” said New York City designer Tina Ramchandani. “People are craving connections and history.” Alessandra Wood, design historian and VP of style at online design firm Modsy, called out early-American examples and their simple forms as particularly resurgent.

OUT: Banal Blues

The calming colour found in dentists’ reception rooms everywhere is “no longer our clients’ go-to,” said Ms. Ramchandani. “Many of my clients have been nervous about using colour and were leaning into blues as their way of adding interest to spaces,” she said of the sometimes melancholy, now overly pervasive colour. Designers are also moving away from blue-based greys and whites.

IN: Mixed Greens

“The one colour our clients are asking for lately is green,” said Betty Brandolino of Fresh Twist Studio in Elmhurst, Ill. Warmer greens like olive won slots in our recent trend reports, but the palette has expanded to include emerald, eucalyptus, jade and teal. “Rich mid-spectrum shades of green bring the outdoors inside,” said Dennese Guadeloupe Rojas, of Interiors by Design in Silver Spring, Md., who singled out colours such as Benjamin Moore’s October Mist [shown above], Valspar’s Garden Flower and Behr’s Sage. How to further intertwine nature and design? “Not just more indoor plants but larger windows and plant-inspired prints,” said New York City designer Laurence Carr.

OUT: Glass Tabletops and Buildings

We don’t usually debate architectural trends in our annual design trend report, but anyone who finds the glass-walled world of HBO’s “Succession” off-putting may be glad to hear from New Yorker David West, founding partner of Hill West Architects. “We have passed the apex of the all-glass facade,” he said. The slick glazing has become “somewhat synonymous with mass production and anonymity.” Same goes indoors, Ms. Taylor said, citing how easily glass can break or become marred. And there’s the smudge factor, as anyone with a gummy-fingered toddler or spouse will lament. “Oy,” she said.

IN: Travertine Tabletops

The sandy limestone plays nicely with other, brighter hues. Using travertine, with its naturally irregular colour patterns, is also like lugging a bit of the countryside indoors, reports interior designer Lauren Lerner, founder of Living with Lolo, in Cave Creek, Ariz. The stone was a midcentury mainstay that popped up again in the 1980s, Ms. Taylor said. “Its comeback now is largely due to its creamy colour, warm feel and organic surface.” In short: It’s back to nature o’clock.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.