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.

Has anyone else been sick for most of the winter? We’ve had the flu run through our home twice. (But I still strongly believe in vaccination. Sorry, Jenny McCarthy.) This means I’ve been a slacker about blogging, and meanwhile, the world has kept turning. Let’s catch up with it, shall we?

New Year’s always means decor trend predictions. My predictions? People are hungry for meaning and security as we navigate the most turbulent economy in 80 years, and this means we’ll want our homes to reflect our deepest values. We’ll still be eager for style and beauty, but less impressed by fashion, and our luxuries will be smaller, more sentimental, more likely to be handmade. “Democratic decorating”, supporting emerging designers on Etsy (like Keith Moore’s bamboo clocks – mmmmm) and at local craft fairs, idiosyncratic mixing of styles and periods, and choosing the most Earth-friendly products will be as important as ever. We’ll still want our homes to be serene, abundant havens, and as a reaction to consumerism, many people will want to declutter and simplify.

Sadly, Domino magazine is no longer here to champion that vision of modern, eclectic, sustainable design; legions of decor bloggers are carrying that torch now.

I’ve been waiting to write about this story for months now. As reported on pages 40-41 of Green Living Online’s Fall 2008 edition, Canada’s Building Codes get only failing-to-poor grades on energy efficiency and sustainability issues, with Alberta failing with the second-lowest grade at 42% (after Nunavut at 40%). No province scored higher than a C. The report itself has not been released by Environmental Defence Canada to date, and I wonder now if it will be. Since it was drafted, parliament has been prorogued and reassembled, Obama has taken office as President, the North American economy has gone from having foreclosure jitters to a full-blown recession, and Environmental Defence appear to have concentrated their resources on the Alberta’s Tar/Oilsands and bisphenol A stories. Meanwhile, this page linking to their May 2008 Green Building Benchmarks seems to be the one to watch for further news on this front: http://environmentaldefence.ca/greencodes/index.php

Alberta’s building codes may not be green enough, but local business in Edmonton is getting greener all the time. The past couple of months have seen local mainstream media coverage of local & organic foodies d’Lish, green home decor & gift destination Carbon Environmental Boutique, and brand new eco-spa/salon The Beauty Parlour. The inexhaustible Jessie Radies (of Keep Edmonton Original and the Blue Pear) is starting to organize a local organic food co-op. E-SAGE hosted a series of fascinating talks by local economies expert Michael H. Shuman, available for download on their website, and are creating a sustainable business directory.

We’ve also seen prominent coverage of the CMHC’s NetZero demonstration homes, though unfortunately CBC emphasized how unaffordable green building is, instead of contextualizing net-zero as being part of a broad continuum of options. As inspiring as the NetZero homes and this LEED-Platinum reno of a 1915 Craftsman bungalow are, you don’t need to go to that extreme to make your home greener. But you knew that, right?

Reports of Compact Fluorescent Lamps causing migraines and skin rashes got a wide airing in late January. I’m still recommending them, for all the reasons I always did, plus one more: I’m skeptical of these claims. The idea that compact fluorescents cause migraines dates from the days before manufacturers switched to electronic ballasts for them, when once in a while you’d find one that flickered a bit – and the well-documented problem of the flickering of their non-compact relatives acting as a migraine trigger in some susceptible individuals. Newer bulbs don’t flicker. As for the skin rashes, it seems unlikely that they are UV burns as claimed, since the spirals are made of UV-blocking glass – and the bulbs I prefer (Philips Marathon in Soft White, and Ikea’s, which both have excellent colour rendition) have the spirals enclosed in frosted Edison-style glass bulbs to diffuse the light. I’m glad that it’s being investigated, though — it’ll be easier to discuss this once we have actual data instead of just anecdotes.

Furthermore, the UK recommendation now is to stay more than 30 cm from bare CFLs. How many bulbs in your house are naked, instead of hidden behind a shade or a frosted Edison-style bulb? How many are 12 inches or less away from you? There aren’t any that answer that description in my home, and chances are there aren’t any in your home either, so there’s no need to panic and change them all back.

Besides, have you seen the new LED LACK pendant lamps at Ikea? In another five-to-ten years we’ll probably be able to replace our burnt-out CFLs with even-more-efficient LED bulbs and this whole discussion will become moot. These ones have the nicest LED light I’ve seen yet, without that extreme blue tinge you so often see. If only they were bright enough to provide task lighting.

While the press widely reported the CFL anecdotes, the ever-reliable-and-inspiring WorldChanging noted that US media almost completely ignored the latest climate science predictions regarding business-as-usual global warming. Of course, science reporting in general is abysmal, but ignorance of the newest climate data has criminal consequences:

“That means ultimate sea level rise of 250 feet, with the best current projection being 5 feet by 2100, rising thereafter 10 to 20 inches a decade (or more) for centuries.”

Wow. Nova Scotia becomes a chain of small islands, most of the world’s major cities are gradually (or not so gradually) swallowed by the ocean, economic & social implications enough to keep anyone awake at night. Maybe Jon Stewart should go after the media’s willful ignorance of climate science next?

Finally, the planting of an organic vegetable garden at the White House has everyone thinking about starting seeds and dreaming of spring: let me leave you with inspiration from a less famous Victory Garden.