I’ve been catching up on reading decorating blogs and magazines lately. One advantage of ploughing through a backlog of posts from recent trade shows and magazine feature articles looking for trends is that it clarifies whether what you’re seeing are passing fancies or a change in the zeitgeist. I believe this is definitely one of those moments of change. The way we decorate  is changing for a variety of reasons, from the economic climate and the resulting desire to make homes more cosy and comforting, to environmental concerns impacting the materials we use and how we use them, to the open-source do-it-yourself ethic of the internet generation. These factors are creating seismic structural changes in the decorating service industry, dictate what the furniture industry is offering, and are reflected in what the shelter mags and design bloggers choose to cover.

Let’s take a look at what zeitgeist-changing trends make a home sexy now:

1. Traditional upholstery details like deep button tufting, welting, and tiny nailhead trims are showing up on new eco-friendly furniture lines (the ones that use FSC-certified wood and latex or soy upholstery foams). They’re also using timeless texture-rich natural-fibre fabrics like (organic, naturally) cotton twill, cotton velvet, linen, or jute. Both the fabrics and the way they are used create contrasts of texture in a room.

2. Grasscloth, a wallcovering made of woven plant fibre, is a timeless eco-friendly choice for adding more gorgeous texture, this time to your walls. What makes it newly trendy – as with paper wallcoverings – is that grasscloth manufacturers have brought bold colours, metallic finishes, and graphic patterns to the party. The feature article on grasscloth in the June 2010 print issue of Style At Home demonstrates this beautifully (but isn’t on their website). Not recommended for damp rooms, and beware of vinyl imposters.

3. Something the high-end shelter magazines and blogs showing the homes of more ordinary people have in common are that the rooms showcased usually have highly personal mixes of vintage finds, family treasures, exotic souvenirs, and iconic designs – instead of matched furniture sets straight from a catalogue or showroom floor.  Why? They’re more interesting, soulful, and expressive to look at and to live with! On the ‘exotic souvenir’ side of this equation, watch for the ikat fabrics and mother-of-pearl inlaid tables that are making the world-traveller look feel fresh. However, what really makes this approach environmentally sound is that it’s using pieces that already exist, and that you will love for a lifetime .

4. What also looks fresh now isn’t the midcentury modern design that filled the pages of AT and Dwell a couple of years ago, but a new traditionalism and glamour (as noted at Apartment Therapy recently – not that I can find the link now in their labyrinthine maze of posts). This shows up in the use of metallic finishes (especially gold), generous draperies, traditional furniture shapes, and antiques as focal points. This doesn’t mean the rooms aren’t meant to be used for day-to-day living, like grandma’s parlour. It means people are using timeless decorating techniques to make their rooms feel cozy, warm, and rich.

5. The International Contemporary Furnishings Fair (ICFF2010) showings this week included a lot of cleverly designed pieces made from minimal materials – like Graypants’ Jupiter series pendant lamps, MIO-Culture’s pop-up baskets, and Ben Huggins’ Little Star table. All three objects are also shipped flat-packed; if you’ve ever been to Ikea you’re already familiar with the environmental rationale for doing that. Smart and sustainable sure sounds sexy to me.

6. The move toward handmade, handcrafted furniture and accessories (the New York Times noted that many of the ICFF2010 editorial award honorees shared this approach)  is so irresistable that sometimes even mass-produced plastic objects are being hand-personalized (as with the Oh chairs in the Umbra booth at ICFF). There are lots of reasons people are choosing handmade and personalized items, but I think most of them come back to authenticity and soulfulness.

Authentic, soulful, smart, warm, rich, interesting, expressive, and touchable – like the perfect mate, you’ll want to grow old with rooms designed using these ideas. And maybe make out in them just a little.

Lately, I’ve been really intrigued by Slow Design, which is a cousin of the Slow Food, traditional skills, and voluntary simplicity movements, and the Zen Buddhist concept of wabi-sabi. The published Slow Design Principles (Strauss and Fuad-Luke, see www.slowlab.net) are couched in academic language, and the case studies cited mostly involve the design of objects or artistic installations. However, the principles and practices of Slow Design are tools that are useful to sustainable designers, decorators, and artisans of all disciplines. To summarize (and loosely quote) that document’s main points:

Slow Design:

• facilitates ’slowness’ and provides a balance to the industrial-consumerist model of design.

• seeks to shift the user’s awareness and attitudes about materials, processes, time, and natural environment.

• reveals experiences and materials that are often missed or forgotten.

• strives for truthful, exposed use of materials and process (so the hand of the maker is visible).

• facilitates creative interaction between the user and the object or its location.

• makes users think about where the object came from, inducing contemplation & ‘reflective consumption’.

• allows the object to change, grow, or alter over time to reflect its history and usage, and continue to be used; and reflects its history prior to its current usage.

• comes from open-source, collaborative, transparent, and evolving processes.

• focuses on localness and community, through collaborations and co-design with the local community and local artisans, mapping and using local knowledge, reflecting local values & visual vernacular, and using affordable local materials, to give the finished design an authentic sense of place.

• celebrates diversity and pluralism by engaging a large range of stakeholders in the planning process. (For example, the charette process used in LEED building projects.)

• recognizes the urgent need for stewardship of the natural environment and resources, as well as honoring local knowledge and traditions, and encouraging engagement with place.

To try to illustrate what these ideas mean in everyday life, I brainstormed this list:

Slow Design is: Slow Design isn’t:

authentic                                                                    mannered, artificial, phoney

heirloom-quality                                                      semi-disposable

refurbished Victorian homes                                NeoVictorian subdivisions

modern (while respecting the past)                     like living in a museum exhibit

gardens                                                                          outdoor living rooms

rain barrels & watering cans                                     automatic irrigation systems

clotheslines                                                                  tumble dryers

timeless                                                                           trend-driven

cedar shakes                                                                 vinyl siding

handmade                                                                     machine-made

reupholstering & refinishing                                   buying new

Etsy                                                                                  Ikea

personalized and creative                                         impersonal and off-the-shelf

local                                                                                  imported

reduce, reuse, recycle                                                   buy, buy, buy

limited-edition or one-off                                            mass-produced

renewable                                                                      fossil fueled

So, what do the principles of slow design mean to you? What would you add to my list? How are you incorporating slow design into your home or decorating projects?

(This article was first published in January 2008 in vol.1, no, 1 of the ecoDomestica reDesign newsletter. It has been edited and updated.)

• Good design delights the eye, the body, and the soul, and is nothing if not personal.
• Good design is mindful of many factors – and if it’s not sustainable, it’s thoughtless.
• Going green isn’t just a trend, and it isn’t just about conserving energy. It’s my responsibility to the health of my clients and the planet to design with sustainability in mind.
• Making small changes to your lifestyle and habits can have greater ecological and societal impact than installing new green products. (I’ll cheer if you’re making big changes to reduce your footprint!)
• Buying local (<500 miles) is better for both the environment and the regional economy. If you can’t find it locally, try to find a Canadian source.
• Trying to hide the TV and other tech toys and tools never works. Luckily, it’s the 21st century, and we have the technology to make technology look good. For example, flat-screen TVs are actually (on average) 30% more energy efficient than their CRT predecessors, and their narrow depth makes rooms seem much bigger. (It also makes them much easier to conceal if you have philosophical objections to them.)
• Hotel and spa style can come off as sterile and boring, instead of soothing. What makes the space yours? What gives it authenticity and personality?
• They’re called throw pillows because they almost never stay on your sofa or bed. They also collect dust, other allergens, and VOCs, making them a healthy-home hazard. Please use them sparingly, and keep them clean.
• There’s clutter (tchotchke), and then there’s clutter (messiness). If you have a magpie’s tendancy to collect little treasures, by all means, keep them. You might need to edit your collections for scale and clarity, but properly displayed they showcase your unique personality.
• Designers who create bookshelves of identical-looking volumes without titles are clearly not readers themselves.
• Handmade and well-used are marks of beauty. Knowing the history of our possessions and seeing the hands of maker and user in them gives them meaning and soulfulness.