Blog 06 Jun 2018

Clerkenwell Design Week 2018 - interior trends

Our interior design team was lucky enough to attend this year’s Clerkenwell Design Week this year in east London. As well as being an exciting opportunity to discover up-and-coming designers and immersing ourselves in inspiring design, the trade show provides the team with important trend insight and topical issues within the world of interior design.

Senior interior designer Cristina Riley outlines the two biggest interior design trends from #CDW18:

Biophilic design

The philosophy of theming an interior around nature was very popular this year. Natural light and materials are essential for this practice, as well as bringing texture into corporate environments.

Biophillic design encourages a better sense of wellbeing not only in the corporate workplace, but also within the healthcare and education sectors and is proven to increase wellbeing and productivity levels. People are happier when they are surrounded by nature, so it is woven into interiors, positively affecting those working in schools, universities, hospitals and offices.

How we use biophilic theory in CPMG’s interior design:

Incorporate more indoor plants: seeing plants taps into our innate desire to be close to nature.

- Calibo

Use colours, textures and patterns which are reflective of nature, particularly tones of green, beige, grey and blue.

- Deadgood

Domestic design meets workplace strategy

We saw a lot of domestic design within work environments at Clerkenwell this year, which is the principle of creating ‘homely feels’ whilst at work. We all know how much more relaxed we are when we’re at home, so it makes perfect sense that employees are happier when surrounded by domestic inspired spaces, furniture and products. If we can introduce these in to the workplace, productivity levels should improve. At Clerkenwell, many designers did this through using a variety of softer furniture in break out zones.

How we’ll use domestic design in CPMG’s workplace strategy:

Continue to incorporate break out areas and encourage social spaces but use furniture and design reminiscent of the home environment.

This will encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing, as well as bringing together different generations, positively impacting wellbeing. After all, our knowledge, experience and technology expertise are important skills which must be shared with our peers, and it is important to use design to facilitate this.

Use open plan office designs with a variety of spaces, which respond to our individual ways of working, regardless of generation.

- Boss Design

How to use Clerkenwell Design Week trends in your workplace interior design:

The interior design industry follows trends, which are usually taken from fashion, technology and nature. We continually apply inspiration taken from these trends and apply it to our work. These are some of our important take-aways from this year’s show:

We will continue to create more flexible workplace areas.
A variety of different spaces will be important for all people within the workplace - engaging the skilled younger generation and retaining them and creating agile and responsive environments for people to continue to do what they do best, better and happier.
As well as the use of new technology to inform products and materials, we also saw technology being incorporated into furniture this year. We will continue to incorporate technology into our design, particularly through loose furniture.

Key interior design materials for 2018-2019: