IN
1. Macramé and fibre-art wall hangings: It gives the sculpture feel to the wall, adding texture while replacing fine art of wallpaper that often is a costly affair.
2. Window sheers: The charm of heavy drapes is on the wane. The trend is more on greater transparency and more light. And sheers are available in linen and rich wool-look. It could be sheer panels with inverted box pleats to give a masculine and tailored look to it.
3. Corduroy upholstery: The look is cool on formal chairs and it is the alternative to velvet, and is equivalent to chenille. The statement is quite gutsy with wider wale.
4. Venetian marbled-paper prints: often found on the back papers of old books, these paper prints with intricately swoopy patterns evoke the romanticism of pre-digital era. The prints are having a renaissance on everything from finely silk-screened linens to the choicest of wallpaper and gold-leafed porcelain.
5. Deco hues: Gray and grease may be going out of the picture when it comes to colour, but for many decorators, bright primary shades are still a source of dislike. The favourite palette for many could be anything muted and Deco-inspired: rose quartz, amethyst, topaz, whiskey, olive and raisin. In short, the colours that seems to be getting filtered through smoke and sunlight. There is an exception however: for many designers, there is a creeping fondness for hits of acid yellow as an attempt to jolt a mellow colour scheme.
OUT
1. Ikat prints: Originally used on prints of dresses for the grandest pashas, the Ikat pattern has turned into a patchy print on kitchen towels.
2. All-white kitchens: It is the control-freak look, with the all-white kitchen that gives it a cold, humourless and stark feel to it. However, the new white-glass appliances provide calm and cleanliness, unlike stainless steel.
3. Woodland creatures: The use of Machiavellian foxes, blinking owls, timid deer and, currently, mushrooms in artwork and textiles as decorative motifs is bordering on kitschy. Go for something that is in fact alive like potted fiddle-leaf fig trees.
4. Books reduced to décor: it is actually making a statement about not reading. Wood of books are being dust-jacketed in matching colours, and then stacked into tabletop tableaux or arrayed on shelves with their spines facing the wall.
5. The Belgian look: Passing into a catalogue cliché, there has been a strong influence with the combination of freshly manufactured "antiques" and linen upholstery with neutral tones. No doubt about, a whole room would look like a hotel lobby by having such a look.
