Home Interior Trends 2017 | How Popular Are Your Home Decor Choices?

The way you choose to style your home can be such a personal decision with many reasons behind each colour scheme, room use or light positioning. Equally, following the latest home interior design trends can be an artform learnt from external sources, such as the internet, magazines or even friend’s homes.

At Black By Design we were curious to discover more about our interior design loving customers, and so we created a simple survey to unearth their home interiors habits and preferences to learn more about them, and in turn, about their homes. From favourite interior design trends to where they are most likely to purchase their furniture, this research has given us a wonderful insight into a more personable side of home interiors (whilst also giving us a sneak peek into our customer’s buying habits!). We hope that you will be able to use our stats to find where you sit on the scale of our questions – are you with the majority of people who prefer to style their home to reflect their personality, or do you like to fit in with current trends?

Whatever your own personal approach to interior design is, we believe that you’ll be able to recognise some aspects that we’ve delved into with our survey, and will be able to take something from away from our findings. Whether that it’s you’re in need of some more copper accessories in your life, or you simply get a new idea for decorating your lounge!

Attitudes to interior design – to invest or not?

Just like clothing fashions, interior design trends seem to come and go. So the question is, do you invest in decor and furniture for your home to suit the latest trend, or do you prefer to have interchangeable pieces that will work no matter what the current interiors look? We wanted to find out if, and on what, people invest in when it comes to styling their homes. 43% prefer to spend money on furniture and homeware that will last, whilst 32% will opt to invest in furniture but not homeware. Perhaps this is due to furniture being more expensive than homeware; a sofa or armchair can be a staple item whilst the accessories around them can be changed. Furthermore, 25% of our respondents prefer to be able to change their furniture and homeware frequently, suggesting that they are keen to keep their fingers on the interior design pulse of what’s popular and are dedicated to keep moving with the times.

Exploring attitudes to interior design, we also asked wanted to unearth what inspires people to style their home the way they do. A majority of 60% like their interiors to reflect their personality and interests. Some 15% of sensible interior design lovers stated that practicality was an important factor in the way they style their homes, whilst a small 5% believe that nostalgia and emotion are key elements in their homeware and furniture choices. Surprisingly, only 20% felt that it was important that their home reflects current trends. These results suggest that even with a keen interest in Scandinavian interiors or vintage decor, people are still eager to inject their personality into their surroundings.

How often do you decorate your home?

A complete overhaul of a room can be an enormous task, not to mention time consuming and expensive. Often for those who rent, decorating isn’t a viable option due to landlord restrictions, so ways to update a room and make it more personable relies on little touches and accessories. We were interested to discover that 45% of people answering our survey decorate their homes every 3 years or more. This perhaps suggests that using accessories and furniture to update a room, rather than painting or wallpapering walls regularly, is the preferred way to ‘redecorate’ more regularly. However, there’s different interpretations of the term ‘decorate’ – for some it will be painting and decorating a whole house or flat, while for others it’s about changing the wallpaper on a feature wall!

Interiors blog Graham & Brown estimated that the average household will redecorate completely every 5 years, but takes into account the various lifestyle circumstances that could mean redecorating more frequently, such as having pets, children, financial restrictions, etc. For those keen to keep up with the latest interior design trends, decorating may well be on the cards more often, or perhaps they choose a neutral backdrop in order to change up furniture and homeware according to trends.

Interior design inspo

There’s some interior design trends that show no sign of disappearing! We were surprised to discover that out of our respondents, 52% said that vintage interior design is their favourite trend. Vintage can cover a whole range of decor and accessories, from the early 20th century to the 1980’s; it’s a subjective term that can encompass a whole variety of home styles. The more recent interiors such as monochrome, industrial, tropical leaf prints and copper accessories took a back seat, though a fusion of each trend with vintage is surely being achieved by some ambitious homeowners!

So, where do you get your interior design inspiration from? We found a close call between social media photo-sharing platforms Instagram and Pinterest, followed by an equal number of people stating they get their interior design inspiration from humble places such as their friend’s homes and by watching TV programmes.

There’s an estimated 70 million active users on Pinterest, and a staggering 700 million average monthly users on Instagram, but Pinterest actively provides a platform for users to build interior design ‘pin boards’. Set up a board for each room in your house and add images that fit into your theme to have a comprehensive inspiration list at the click of a mouse! All four of these inspirational options will show different home styling ideas, and are a perfect place to look if you’re feeling a drought of ideas.

The Black By Design home interiors survey has provided a wealth of interesting information that has given us (and you!) precious insight into the home styling habits of our respondents.

So, how popular are your interior design choices? The results in our survey showed that:

1. People invest in furniture & homeware that will last
2. They like their interiors to reflect their personality & interests
3. Homeowners tend to redecorate every 3 years or more
4. Vintage is the most popular interior design trend
5. People use social media sites such as Instagram & Pinterest for their interior design inspiration

This first part has featured interior design inspiration and attitudes to decorating, plus the places people seek their home interior inspiration from. Discover if your homeware and furniture spending habits are in line with our respondents in the second part of our Home Interiors Trends 2017 series where we will be finding out exactly how much homeowners are spending per year on furniture and homeware!