2024 Home & Interior Retail Trends: Finding Comfort in ‘Newstalgia’

This season, householders are blending themes of longevity and familiarity with a frivolous sense of play.

A generation who grew up carefully curating their environments has matured. A notable shift towards cherishing keepsakes and prioritising meaningful, rather than stylish, decor is on the rise.  

Gen-Z leads this shift, using bold and unconventional decor as a form of self-expression. TikTok ‘thriftfluencers’ have adopted a more frivolous interpretation of ‘vintage’ and design studios catering to this customer playfully juxtopose traditional with modern and serious with playful elements, forming new visions of what timeless style is, and can be. This joyful optimism creates a vibrant sense of newstalgia, combining the best of past and present. 

Sustainability also plays a major role here, as repair culture moves into the mainstream and people seek to extend the life of their possessions through timeless detailing and eclectic styling. The luxury of comfort comes into play. Where little luxuries are enjoyed as part of the everyday, cherished enough to restore and repair again, and again, and again.

2024 E-commerce and Retail Trends: Tracking ‘Memory Collectors’

Our Home & Interiors ‘Memory Collectors’ trend originally forecasted this movement towards modern heritage in our seasonal trend forecast published in 2022.  

We explore the adoption of ‘Memory Collectors’, as we track and validate how this has been applied across 2024 retail trends and e-commerce this season. 

What we said 

Contemporary keepsakes are the objects of meaning as we seek to surround ourselves, imbued with values and memories. This trend is very much about intention, living the past with the present while being mindful of long-term futures. We see a real appreciation of home, and an investment in home as the ultimate place to seek comfort.

The aesthetic of this trend was significantly influenced by the elegance and timelessness of Parisian culture; something which not only chimed with the emerging emotional desires we were seeing, but we also knew would be topical for 2024 alongside the opening of the Parisian Olympic games. Such significant cultural references are always triangulated by our creative team, alongside several signals in politics, science, art, literature, illustration, TV and film to ensure confidence in the relevance of the theme two years ahead, ensuring we aren’t being skewed by a single event or case study.

Decor is eccentrically mismatched in a way that is elaborate yet retains a modern edge. Striped plates are mixed with decorative fluted glass and hand-painted porcelain. Still life oil paintings hang near pleated and ruffled textiles and mismatched ditsy prints. Painted wooden furniture is a mixture of clean lines interspersed with vintage references like scalloped edges and beading.

What we saw 

Particularly prevalent across UK retailers, the whimsical charm of this trend story was joyfully applied by brands such as George Home, Dunelm and Next. Memory Collectors proved versatile and commercial, working across multiple domestic environments; bedrooms, kitchens as well as garden and outdoor product. Soft accessories such as cushions and tablecloths tapped into this aesthetic with ruffled edges and mismatched patterns. This trend story also added charm to cook and dine ranges, with striped dinner plates and scalloped serve wear seen across retailers.   

Are you ready for the next shifts in householder attitudes towards home and interior design aesthetics? 

Our seasonal trend forecasts provide inspiration for designers, product developers and creatives working in the home industries. These reports and full forecasts are available now on My TrendBible Premium.