Trending Now: Comfort, Multipurpose and Intention

Out with Generic and in with Purpose: Today’s Designs are Personal and Personable

If you feel like keeping up with home trends is like cool hunting or fast fashion, it may be time to put on the brakes and slow down. Forget the Pantone color of the year, the must-have appliance and mid-century mania. These pros say it’s time to embrace timelessness and intention. 

Loving the Lived-In Look
Based on the North Fork, Jaclyn Charron, owner of her eponymous design firm, brings her experience renovating and collaborating with her builder husband to her interior design practice. Together, they are embarking on projects that involve renovation, even down to the studs, and then a complete interior design for a total turnkey opportunity. 

Charron specializes in sourcing existing items and giving them new life by upholstering or refinishing them anew or fresh context by mixing with other pieces, often from showrooms. And it’s a trend that clients are adapting as they seek to make their homes look comfy and creative.

“Working with a patina furnishes a room so that it doesn’t look ‘bought’ but has an offbeat touch and is more distinctive,” Charron says, noting that in the age of Pinterest and online shopping, many homes end up looking cookie cutter. “Working within the world of vintage allows you to provide a unique product because there’s a scarcity of that item—not a lot of people have it.”

Charron is keen on finding stand-out and stand-alone items that can establish a space, have a function but also serve as heirloom-quality pieces. For a recent home design, she eschewed the traditional working kitchen island for a vintage Chinese alter table, reworked to function in the kitchen at counter height. It’s part of her practice to create what she calls “hard-working rooms”—spaces that have identity, intention, function and beauty.

The designer says her practice is also about reducing waste when once-loved pieces are rescued—something that sustainable-minded clients appreciate. 

Intentional And Personal
Kristen Farrell is no stranger when it comes to figuring out the next hot thing in residential design. She launched her own business last year, stepping away from the homebuilding work for which she was known as a partner in Farrell Building Company, distancing herself from the trend cycle, as well.

“The build-design industry is in a copycat cycle of trends,” says Farrell, now rebranded under Kristen Farrell & Co., her bespoke design/build company. Whereas building plans were once the driver of a project, now that’s intention—how clients want to use their space, how to curate for that, and, in the end, to deliver a home that speaks to function, flow and family.

“Before we even put a shovel in the ground, we are thinking through the flow and intentional use of space and how we meet the needs in the room-to-room experience,” she says. 

That process involves a deep dive into materials: how they mix and layer—not match—to give a home a sophisticated overlay, but not so formal that people can’t feel at home. 

“A home is not a show,” she says. “It is the most intimate space you experience on a daily basis; it is a family- centric and comfortable. We have conversations about livability, not design.”

Saying much of contemporary interior design on the East End has trended toward “a marshmallow” look, Farrell says “for the first time it feels like the Hamptons decorating frenzy is stalling and people are considering more thoughtful spaces, and looking for projects to having the right flow and a uniqueness.”

Easy-Does-It Maintenance And Style
At Stelle Lomont Rouhani, a Bridgehampton-based architecture firm that specializes in coastal residences, partner Viola Rouhani says there is a trend towards “warmth and layering of natural materials and textures. Post-Covid, there is also a trend towards houses working harder. They are no longer just a place to live, they are also a place for wellness and for working.”

“We are always looking to make the most of every situation and figure out how to make spaces feel effortless, easy on the eye and not overcomplicated,” she says.

“When we think about the house, it’s not only about the present, but the future of the house and [its] maintenance and that all ties into the idea of sustainability,” she says. “Over time, that has attracted a lot of clients to us because we approach environmental circumstances in a way that feels very intentional.”

Inside, interior design partner Eleanor Donnelly says “you want to make sure that the design elements are respecting the architectural concepts for the room. … by pairing complementary colors and textures [and] developing a sophisticated aesthetic palette that exudes harmony, serenity and establishes a feel for a home.”

She adds, “We tend to approach projects with a distilled palette … we’re not afraid of color but there are not rainbows everywhere. We like to work within a lane of color that speaks to the materials that are part of the architecture, and also take inspiration from the location.”

To that end, Michael Lomont says one of the firm’s signature programs is optimizing opportunities for seamless indoor/outdoor living. “People come out here for a reason and that is not to see more development, but the beautiful landscape and to interact with that,” he says.