Journal — 1 August 2026
Timeless Interior Design: Why Trends Come and Go, but Quality Lasts
Every year brings a new must-have in interiors. Some are lovely. Most are gone within a few seasons. I have never designed to a trend, and I would gently encourage you not to base a whole home on one either. Trends can inform a space, but they should never lead it. If you doubt that, think of the avocado bathroom suite, or peach tiles and gold taps. Each was the height of fashion once, and each dated badly.
Trends inform, they don't lead
I learned this early, working in luxury retail, where nothing was ever designed for the moment. The pieces that mattered were built on quality materials, beautiful finishes, and proportions that would still feel right in twenty years. That is the difference between something fashionable and something good. Fashion asks what everyone is doing right now. Good design asks what will still feel considered and beautiful long after the trend has passed.
Where a trend belongs
This does not mean a home should be frozen or safe. Trends are wonderful to play with, as long as you put them where they belong: in the layers that are easy and inexpensive to change. Paint colour, wallpaper, a cushion, a considered accessory. These let a home feel current and personal, and if your taste shifts in five or ten years, they cost little to swap out.
The permanent, expensive decisions are where timelessness matters most. A kitchen is the clearest example. When you redesign a kitchen, you want it to hold up for twenty years, just as practical and just as beautiful as the day it was finished. That is not the place for a trend that will feel tired by the time the paint is dry. It is the place for honest materials: natural stone, quality timber, considered joinery, and tapware that ages gracefully. Get the bones right, then have fun with the layers on top.
What timeless really means
Timelessness is not really about any single object. It is a way of thinking about design as a whole. Consider the Eames lounge chair, then consider a slab of marble. One is a piece of furniture, the other a raw material, yet both have stayed beautiful for generations for the same reason. Neither was designed to capture a moment. They earn their place through materials, proportion, craftsmanship and honest beauty, and that is exactly why they have outlived every trend since. That is what real design is about: not is this in fashion, but will this still be beautiful, and still work, in twenty years.
Five timeless design choices
These five have stood the test of time, and they are not all furniture. Some are pieces, some are materials, but each endures for the same reason.
Barcelona Chair (Mies van der Rohe, 1929). Pure proportion and hand-finished leather. Nearly a century on it still reads as modern, because it was never trying to be of its moment, only to be right.
Chesterfield sofa. No single designer, just a silhouette refined over generations. It sits as comfortably in a period home as a pared-back one, because its beauty is in the form and the quality of the hide or linen, not a passing look.
Herringbone timber flooring. A pattern, not a piece, and one that has warmed grand homes for centuries. Laid in solid timber it can be sanded and refinished for generations, quietly outlasting everything placed on top of it.
Marble benchtop. A material, not a piece, and proof the same principle runs right through the bones of a home. Natural stone has been used for thousands of years, and it ages, marks and patinas into something more beautiful, never less.
Unlacquered brass tapware and hardware. A finish, not a piece, and the opposite of a trend. Left raw and unlacquered, brass patinas slowly with use, deepening and warming over the years, so it looks better the longer you live with it, never worse.
Design for the life, not the moment
The homes I love most are not the ones chasing every new look. They are the ones built around good materials, considered choices, and the way the people living there actually want to live. Trends will keep coming and going, that is their nature. Design for what lasts, and let the trends be the fun you layer on top.