The Designer Home in 2023: These Client Requests Are Taking Off

Presented by BLANCO

“Decorating is sheer fun,” the maximalist icon Dorothy Draper once said. “A delight in color, an awareness of balance, a feeling for lighting, a sense of style, a zest for life, and an amused enjoyment of the smart accessories of the moment.”

Draper would be having a ball right now. Her modern counterparts sure are: Designers report that, after the close quarters of the height of the COVID pandemic and the frenzied holiday adventures of its immediate aftermath, clients are buzzing. They’ve always wanted homes that reflect who they are. What’s new is their desire for places that embody what they know.

Clients Are More Informed Than Ever—And More Daring

“Clients have been educating their eyes,” says AD100 designer Nicole Hollis. Those hours spent scrolling Instagram and Pinterest, the afternoons at museums and galleries, the nights spent watching auction results—Joan Didion’s being a recent hot example—the dinners at restaurants pushing the boundaries of both cuisine and design…these moments create clients with an unprecedented body of knowledge around architecture and aesthetics. “Instagram has really emboldened people,” says designer Young Huh, a fresh inductee to the AD100. “Or, let’s say, empowered people. They’ve been able to consume so much design content that they have an opinion on wallpapers or murals or finishes. They come to us well-prepared.”

This preparation, Huh says, allows them to embrace choices that once would have felt too risky. Clients feel increasingly comfortable mixing patterns and periods and rethinking arrangements—not only because they trust the designer, but because they have seen it work in other places. “Everyone either understands or claims to understand design and periods and designers nowadays,” says designer Andre Mellone, another AD100 inductee. “Social media has raised the popularity, and clients are much more attuned. In the best sense, it’s great to have an informed client, because then the decisions you make are mutually understood.” 

Designers have always benefited from having history at their fingertips and the latest trends on their minds; now, their clients likely will too, which means designers need to be able to communicate in more specific ways about what will work for their clients, and what won’t.

To Look Forward, First Look Backward

“As we get more digital and virtual, design is getting more specific,” says designer Neal Beckstedt, who was recently welcomed into the AD100. “It’s getting more and more about that feeling of being transported, whether you’re going super 1970s or super 1870s.”

Pros should plan on going the extra mile to deliver a top-notch design—which may mean you need to do more homework than in years past. Adam Charlap Hyman of AD100 firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero says he buttresses his clients’ existing knowledge base with extensive research, combing through back issues of design magazines, manuscripts, and design archives around the world. “Consulting them to become familiar not only with artists and designers but with the projects and spaces that have had that person’s work in them before is really helpful. We start our process by looking at tons and tons of imagery, and selecting with the client what might be a top 50.” 

It’s time consuming, but bonding. “In general,” Charlap Hyman explains, “we’ve found that there’s no better way to build trust than to show how someone else has done it. It’s not going to be the same way, of course, but having a reference image that is really cool and compelling is a bit of proof of concept. The images that we’ve brought to the table form a kind of shared pool of ideas that we all really love.” 

This collaborative approach respects the client’s familiarity while also articulating the designer’s vision, hopefully establishing trust and authority. It also gives depth to the design. “By gathering furniture pieces from different eras and places, an unexpected yet perennial aesthetic is created,” says Hilary Miners, head of environment design for Brand Bureau. And that, she adds, allows “the collection to feel like it has been layered over time.” 

As Beckstedt puts it, “The sense that history equals authenticity is stronger than it has been before.” Pros should plan accordingly.

Old-School Rooms Make a Comeback—And New Ones Edge Their Way In

Clients’ ability to go offline and into the world finds them returning home with fresh eyes. The lines between hospitality and residential design are still blurry. “We’re getting a lot of clients saying, ‘I stayed at this private resort and want something like that’ at home,” reports Mellone. “They want something with a certain sensuality, a certain sexiness.” And they’ll go to great lengths to recapture that feeling. The impulse is not only to bring luxury home, but to maximize every square inch of the house. “COVID made people use their home more and realize all its potential functions,” says Beckstedt. 

Amhad Freeman, an interior designer based in Nashville, reports that clients are reclaiming tables from their previous temporary incarnations as ersatz work desks and bringing back a trusty old favorite: the dining room. “Why is it a room that just kind of sits in the corner?” he asks. “Our attitudes can change. It can be formal, but it doesn’t have to be.” 

Orlando Rodriguez of New York City–based firm Whitehall Interiors has been advising clients to reinvent unused areas, creating amenity spaces like podcast rooms. “The room is a small, simple space with acoustic treatments, a counter which houses microphones and speakers,” he says. “It taps into the social media zeitgeist of our time, while enabling the utilization of cramped spaces that would otherwise be ‘dead space.’”

Little Wing Lee’s clients similarly want to take advantage of what they have. “We’re always thinking about flexibility of spaces, so that a stool in the living room can become an extra seat at the dining room table,” she says. “If the kitchen is also a gathering place, it’s functioning as it should.” And designer Becky Carter’s clients want that functionality to also feel familiar. “Across the board, clients are prioritizing ways that their homes accommodate personal rituals,” she says, “whether it’s a portion of their kitchen that is engineered for making a perfect coffee, an immaculately considered bathroom vanity, or a very specifically designed reading nook, clients are homing in on their homes as an extension of their daily practices.” Designers who are able to tune into the nuances of their client will separate themselves from the competition.

Puttin’ on the Ritz

Freeman and Mellone say their clients still long for a five-star hotel bathroom of their own—one that leans into warm neutrals and high-end fixtures. “The biggest ask I get is them wanting a nice toilet,” Freeman laughs. Other designers hear that their clients want bathrooms with up-to-date, top-of-the-line functionality, but still look like a traditional bathroom, free of futuristic interfaces and technology. “Our clients are now requesting very traditional plumbing,” says Huh. “It’s a bathroom that looks like a bathroom, and a really pretty one versus something minimal.” 

When it comes to kitchens, clients are asking Mellone for the usual luxe travertine and Carrara, of course. “But also things like Caesarstone and Corian, because they’re so functional. And it becomes a challenge to sort of make those things cool.” The secret, he says, is to use it for texture. 

Personality-Forward Design

Clients are definitely moving towards the decorative, designers say. “Pre-COVID, you wanted your space to be a refuge from the outside world, something more neutral and less chaotic,” says Le Whit principal Corey Kingston. “Now, people are tired of staring at white walls. They want more comforting and more personality-driven homes.” Those clients whose personalities drive them to collect art want rooms that integrate, not just archive, their collections. “We’re seeing requests for lots of walls in a home, to best display art,” says Hollis. And everywhere, they want color—on those walls, within furnishings, in the very veins of materials. “People are really open to color clashing,” Huh says. “They’re prepared to mix wallpaper and patterns and go high octane. Louis XVI chairs and Victorian chairs, fringe and tie-backs, all in salon-style layouts with different groupings and darker, more saturated colors.” 

Mellone is best known for his luxurious minimalism, “but even I am losing a little of my color intimidation,” he says, working with clients to bring in accents of primary colors derived from their contemporary art collections. “Everyone is trying to differentiate their rooms,” says Beckstedt. “They want there to be a surprise from room to room. Color and pattern can change to give that difference, unified by a mix of furniture that still remains consistent throughout. It’s definitely on a huge upswing.” And relevant all through the house too: “People are willing to be bolder,” says Lee. “In the neutral bathroom, look up: there’s wallpaper on the ceiling. It’s about color and texture, in very curated areas.”

Even in kitchens, those traditional bastions of white-on-white and metal, clients are “taking more risks, 100 percent,” reports Beckstedt. “Especially with marble, they’re asking for veining in lavender and other colors. Even granite.” Freeman says his clients are responding to “moody colors” for countertops and in marble choices. “Warmer tones, but not necessarily gold. There’s a new finish called Titanium that’s black, polished nickel—and it’s beautiful, quite stunning.” 

In the end, it’s about a bit of joie de vivre in the home sweet home. “COVID has taught people that they really want to live their lives,” says Huh. “There’s this resurgence of passion for living.” If that passion encompasses a design education, designers can incorporate that. “The market for design can seem abstract, says Charlap Hyman. “My goal is that the client really loves seeing everything that they have, and that it gives another texture to their life that is compelling—and also that they’ve been able to support galleries and made a good investment.” And if that passion means bringing together styles and movements that once might have clashed, or colors previously beyond the pale, all the better. “Design allows for that,” says Huh. “Lots of cushions, a little bit of clutter, your aunt’s old chair that doesn’t quite match. It’s an eclectic openness to living.” Or, in the immortal words of Dorothy Draper: “The Drab Age is over.”