The Global Pilgrimage of Design: Where Luxury Interior Designers Will Find Inspiration in 2025–2026
📍Shanghai: Interior Lifestyle
12–14 September 2025 | Shanghai Exhibition Centre
This show is a study in contrast: high-tech material research meets traditional Asian craftsmanship. Expect to encounter:
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Minimalist porcelain from Hangzhou reimagined as lighting
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Modular wood systems inspired by Japanese joinery
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Futuristic air-purifying fabrics
Real-World Design Application: Perfect for designers exploring sustainable quiet luxury. Think clients with Shanghai penthouses or wellness-minded retreats who demand the future, but with cultural soul. A place to find future-proof surfaces that still feel ancestral.
Who's Going: Asia-based firms like Neri&Hu, and boutique studios designing for clients in Singapore and Kyoto.
📍London: London Design Festival
13–21 September 2025 | Various Districts
With Brompton Design District led by Alex Tieghi-Walker, the 2025 theme revolves around craft as resistance and radical softness.
Design Application: This is where you find the philosophy of space. Perfect for building emotive narratives for UHNWI clients who value legacy and tactility. You’ll leave with concepts to integrate rituals into everyday luxury: hand-sanded thresholds, stone hand-warming niches, whisper-quiet doors.
Designers to Watch: Ilse Crawford, Rose Uniacke, and emerging firms from the Royal College of Art.
See: Poured lime plasters that catch the morning fog; ebonised oak panels layered with beeswax.
Touch: Burnished brass curtain rods, hand-wrapped in natural twine.
📖 Read before you go: The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
🪑 Find inspiration in: Sebastian Cox’s cabinetry — timeless British understatement in form.
📍Shenzhen: Design Shenzhen
18-21 September 2025 | Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center
A showcase of Asia's fastest-evolving design front. Here, you won't find repetition—you'll find recalibration. Expect:
- Furniture that charges your devices wirelessly through its surface
- Algorithmically designed light patterns inspired by bamboo forests
- AI-informed smart textiles for sound and light diffusion
Use This to Fuel: Smart environments that retain beauty. Think home automation for art collectors, luxury apartment owners in futuristic cities.
First-Time Exhibitor Highlight: Yi Design Studio will premiere porcelain-powdered terrazzo tiles crafted from ceramic waste.
📍London: Decorex
12 - 15 October 2025 | Olympia, London
Decorex is London’s most refined interior design gathering — four days where heritage craft meets modern artistry. Expect heritage-touch installations, sculptural furnishings, and artisanal lighting that feel like whispered stories rather than staged displays.
What to Bring Home: Materials that age with grace — leather-wrapped handles, custom-woven fabrics, and inlaid lighting — to be woven into homes as future heirlooms.
Featured This Year: A bar by Lucy Mayers of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, and a VIP Lounge reimagined by Adẹ̀kọ́ & Co., where narrative meets nuance.
📍Dubai: Dubai Design Week & Downtown Design
5–9 November 2025 | Downtown
This fair is now one of the world’s most important for understanding how regional craft merges with architectural clarity.
What to Bring Home: Learn to anchor your schemes with culturally loaded finishes. Translate this into custom cabinetry, niche walls, and collector’s doors.
- Designers Featured: The Line Concept, Kristina Zanic, and emerging Saudi architects.
- See: Calligraphy turned into stair railings.
- Touch: Hand-glazed tiles whose pattern is felt before seen.
- Bring Back: The concept of majlis reinterpreted for a contemporary Riyadh salon.
📖 Read before you go: Earth & Utopia by Hassan Fathy
🕌 Listen to: the silence between pavilions. It’s where design begins.
📍Amsterdam: Workspace Design Show
5–6 November 2025 | Hall 5 RAI
In a world where luxury homes now demand boardroom functionality, this show becomes essential. You’ll find:
- Acoustic wall systems wrapped in suede and raw felt
- Desks as sculptural installations
- Ambient scent zoning through HVAC-infused materials
Why Attend: If you're designing a billionaire’s home office or private equity boardroom, this is where quiet power aesthetics begin.
📍New York: Hospitality's Boutique Design Trade Fair
17–25 January 2026 | NY 10001
This is where the boutique hotel world leaks into residential design. Expect:
- Hyper-tactile wall panels in cast glass and molten bronze
- Furniture lines inspired by Wes Anderson aesthetics
- Integrated art-light-sound hybrid pieces
Design Lesson: Think “home as a personal spa or boutique hotel.” Perfect for clients designing pied-à-terres, retreats, or legacy apartments in global capitals.
Who to Watch: Roman and Williams, Studio Giancarlo Valle, SHoP Architects.
📍Milan: Brera Design Week
14–20 May 2026 | Via Brera 28
A sacred rite of passage. In Brera, design isn’t presented—it’s performed. You’ll walk through:
- Sculptural light exhibitions in 18th-century cloisters
- Vintage archives reinterpreted in AI-generated textiles
- Olive wood kitchens designed to sound like string instruments
📍Copenhagen: 3 Days of Design
10–12 June 2026 | Frederiksgade 1
Here, you won’t find chrome or gloss — but rather, soap-treated pine, raw ceramic, and fabrics that smell faintly of flax and fire.
- See: A monastic dining table set beneath candlelight filtered through untreated linen.
- Touch: Wood so smooth it feels like it’s been worn down by generations.
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Bring Back: A plan for a hygge-infused reading salon in a Swiss mountain retreat or Cotswolds estate.
📖 Read before you go: In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki
🛋️ Study closely: Frama Studio’s philosophy on silence as space.
📍Cologne: Orgatec
27-30 October 2026 | 50679 Köln, Germany
Orgatec has become the ultimate destination for elevated workspace design — not in the corporate sense, but in the realm of powerful discretion.
- See: Meeting tables carved from 400-year-old trees.
- Touch: Kvadrat’s acoustic wool — like felted mist.
- Bring Back: A boardroom suite for a client’s private family office — entirely lined in quiet.
📖 Read before you go: Atmospheres by Peter Zumthor
🔇 Walk through: Vitra’s “Quiet Work” — it changes how you feel about productivity.
📌Registration & Designer Tips
- Register early to gain access to VIP pre-openings and curated talks
- Book one-on-one artisan consultations to pre-order custom finishes or hardware
- Take notes on multisensory materials—how they smell, feel, behave over time
- Collect tactile samples where possible—UHNWI clients care more about the feel than the render
- Post-show, prepare digital concept deck for your clients translating inspiration into moodboards
An Heirloom Approach. Tactile Intelligence. Considered Decisions.
Invite Vellum & Forge into your next masterpiece
Begin your collaboration: studio@vellumforge.com
