, The Sunday Times
Milan Design Week is fashion week for interiors folk. If you love palazzi and prosecco, and snooping around the homes of design world superstars, it’s brilliant. It’s also where the trends that will dominate the high street homeware collections and ultimately our homes are spotted.
The international style set get their steps in scuttling between Rho fairground, where 2,000 exhibitors await the footfall of about 370,000 trade visitors, and the city, where over a thousand events vie for attention, and you can find everything from kitchens on wheels (a surprisingly practical idea from Very Simple: Kitchen) to matching duvet covers and PJs (perfect for those who want to be invisible in bed) at Marimekko.
Prosecco, parties and private jets aside, this is the place to spot what will be landing in British homes. Eighteen months before arrival, Milan in April is the place to watch them taxi down the runway for take-off. Here are eight I predict will be passing through airport security in 2026.
Lee Broom’s Cascade light, £643
Return of the big light
The big light has for too long been non grata. We’ve shunned the central ceiling light, with its weird shadows and unflattering glare, preferring our pendants in trios over the kitchen island or (the super-stylish bedside lamp substitute) hanging either side of the headboard. But thanks to the big lighting show Euroluce, at Salone del Mobile, BLs are set for a revival. Dazzling examples at the fairground include Martinelli Luce’s Multidot light sculpture; a glorious handblown Czech glass Balance 1.0 pendant from Sklo, from £2,100, sklo.com; and the British designer Lee Broom’s Cascade wireless lamp, made in collaboration with Lladro, £643, lladro.com. Welcome back, our brilliant friend.
Modernism throw, Tara Bernerd for Frette, £1,625
The colour: barolo
Call it burgundy, maroon, or, since we are in Italy, let’s say barolo. It’s the intense shade of red so widespread in the shows across the city that it started to look like a neutral this week. Marimekko’s vibrant new range by Laila Goha features barolo stripe bedding, from €77 (£66), and matching PJs, marimekko.com
The deep wine red wiggles on the throws in the new Modernism collection, designed by Tara Bernerd for Frette, £1,625, are a delight. At the Brera Design Apartment, Via Palermo 1, designed by Zanellato/Bortotto studio, the bedroom walls and carpet are a rich, inviting burgundy. SCP’s Maxi Club armchair, by George Sowden, the British industrial designer who was one of the founding members of the Memphis Group, comes in a rich burgundy upholstery, £5,381, scp.co.uk. Saluti to the colour of the week.
A mirror designed by Seletti
The brand: Seletti
Seletti’s eccentric surrealism has been delighting design insiders since 1964, so why is its whimsical take on decor tipped to be a hot trend in British homes 60 years on? Because the Seletti Market — a “pop supermarket” inspired by early Italian minimarts and selling the brand’s unconventional designs — is popping up in Selfridges Oxford Street until August 31. This utterly Instagrammable foothold in one of the most influential stores in London will transform it from niche brand to widely shared interiors inspo. This design week in Milan, Seletti debuted Hotel Voyeur, a collaboration with the artist Tracey Snelling and Samsung Galaxy (which did the fancy light show on the façade of the flagship store in Corso Garibaldi). The product is a lamp in the shape of a hotel, with videos of guests’ private lives playing at the six windows that remind us of our natural inclination for peeping at the way others live. Particularly on the nose for this crowd. Who said designers weren’t self-aware?
• The A-list’s favourite fashion designer — with a new homeware range
Bye, sad beige luxury. Hi, crazy rich design
In Milan, all the signs point one way. Stealth wealth’s stock is tumbling. Those tasteful curved cream bouclé couches and pillows in a melange of taupes were once the acceptable face of prosperity. Very demure, very understated. But now that the discreet luxury look has filtered down to the high street, premium labels are having to rethink how they communicate opulence. For example? Louis Vuitton, the usual suspect for putting the fun into furniture, is launching a superluxe ping-pong table inspired by the undersea world, by Campana Studio and Totem Vinyle — basically a leather-clad sculptural flower shape with a turntable on top, for €150,000. Meanwhile, at Palazzo Citterio, Loewe — the fashion brand celebrated for its experimental art and craft projects — is holding an exhibition featuring the work of 25 artists and architects who have reimagined the teapot, and there are accompanying cosies in the shape of plush bunnies and felt ducks, £550. The eccentric Easter gift for the tea drinker who has everything.
Sofa by Lara Bohinc for Maison Phelippeau
Fat furniture
This year the smart showrooms and exhibition spaces have ditched spindly, sleek seats and are heaving with roly-poly sofas and bosomy chairs. There’s the limited-edition design-art Anima collection by Lara Bohinc, on view at Alcova, created in collaboration with the French upholstery house Maison Phelippeau, priced from £11,400. Billed as “a sculptural collection of three limited-edition upholstered seating pieces rooted in Jungian psychology, representing the feminine aspect of the unconscious, a bridge between instinct and introspection”, they look, to the British eye, like big bums — in a very, very good way. Another fat favourite of 2025: Knoll’s Michelin man-adjacent Biboni sofa designed by Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of Johnston Marklee, from £8,480. Which brings us to Roche Bobois’s show. The French design label invited the director Pedro Almodóvar to reimagine its curvy, inviting Bubble design, £7,120 for the sofa and £2,430 for the armchair, in brilliant pop art colours. Having tried out a fair few in person, I can confirm that once you’ve had fat (couches), there’s no going back.
Artwork by Faye Toogood for Noritake
The motif: the doodle
Maybe in a reaction to AI — the creative nightmare that is stalking the designers this year — sketches, scribbles, mark making and freehand brushstrokes feature strongly in the shows. In the 5VIE design quarter, the installation Girotondi by Sara Ricciardi, in collaboration with Rometto and Doodle Rugs, features carpets with scribbly motifs. In Alcova, the heritage Japanese brand Noritake exhibits ceramics from a project with the British creative Faye Toogood, who travelled to Japan to handpaint pink and green brushstrokes onto its plain archive tableware in a tribute to her Hampshire garden. (Rose, a limited-edition collection priced from £2,000, noritakedesign.com)
The centrepiece of Rockwell’s Casa Cork installation in Via Solferino
Retro materials revival
Straight-out-of-the-Seventies plain pine — in benches, daybeds and chairs — was the surprise highlight in Ikea’s Stockholm range. (It’s the Swedish furniture giant’s high-end collection, and elevated high street is another trend this spring: look at Next’s N Premium and Primark’s new home edit.) Among the no-foam sofas, decorative textiles and delightful lights, the naked timber furniture whispered low-key luxury. Also: why do we so often insist on more expensive oak? There’s the show FORMICA (r)EVOLUTION at Fenix Scenario, dedicated to the evolution of the laminate from the 1940s to the 1980s. Gucci is mounting an exhibition that celebrates the history of bamboo in interiors, Bamboo Encounters, at Chiostri di San Simpliciano, with standout works by the Palestinian artist Dima Srouji who embellishes bamboo baskets with hand-blown glass additions. But the retro material most deserving of a revival, according to the New York architecture studio Rockwell Group, is cork, for both its beautiful tactile nature and its sustainability (cork is bark that can be harvested without harming the tree). The centrepiece of Rockwell’s Casa Cork installation in Via Solferino is a mammoth replica of a cork tree clad in reclaimed cork bark. The show includes furniture, lighting and, at the opening party, a cocktail bar and Cirque du Soleil acrobat. Cheers to a cork comeback.
Do You Have One rug by India Mahdavi for CC Tapis, €8,274
The object of desire: a picture rug
The picture rug is having a moment in Milan this year. While upholstery remains largely plain, bedding and rugs are taking a turn for the hyper-decorative. As ever, the luxury brand Illulian has a unique point of view: its Exotic Jungle rug by Simone Guidarelli is a vision of monkeys, birds, ferns and palms. In Gallery Via Tortona, Carpet Society and Gert Voorjans are presenting vivid rugs with painterly compositions. Best of the artworks for the floor at design week are by India Mahdavi for the Milanese brand CC Tapis. The Iranian-French designer’s Rebus collection includes the Do You Have One rug, a graphic composition featuring the evil eye, €8,274, cc-tapis.com. We’ve got our eye on this one.
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