Milan Design Week (aka the most fashionable interior show of the year) is becoming increasingly important. While other design weeks are buzz only among the insider crowd, Milan (or Salone del Mobile) is on everyone’s Instagram feed with the biggest luxury fashion houses like Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton showcasing their homeware collections alongside interior-design giants and contemporary names like Faye Toogood and Studio Ashby.
What makes it even more fun are the amazing collaborations that pop up every year; The highlight of 2026 was Cook and writer Laila Gohar’s collaboration with Arquette. Along with a surreal exhibition (an ancient carousel was decorated with giant vegetables to take the place of horses), there is an extremely shoppable collection of clothes.
With that, here are five trends from Milan Design Week 2026 that everyone is talking about and that I predict will shape the insider conversation for the next 12 months.
5 key interior trends from Milan Design Week 2026
1. Lamp as objet d’art
(Image credit: Who Wears What in the UK)
Style Notes: The simple floor lamp is no longer an afterthought. At this year’s Milan Design Week, lighting entered the realm of sculpture. The most talked-about lamp came from an unexpected source: Aesop launched its first lighting collection, Apso, featuring a trio of table, pendant, and floor lamps taken from the shape of the brand’s iconic hand balm tube. Handmade from glass and brass in collaboration with lamp brand Flos, the pieces are produced in Italy and Germany and limited to 500 sets; Already one of the most coveted items of the year.
Elsewhere, Andrea Claire Studio’s Totemic collection lends itself to an architectural lighting installation, placing three shadow forms (Moon, August and Sage) in a vertical structure that treats the light fitting as jewelery for the space. Dior maison unveiled its new Coral lamp, while Bottega Veneta presented 10 limited-edition pieces by Korean designer Kwangho Lee, each an abstract sculpture woven in spaghetti-esque strips of thick leather.
For those who want the look without the collector’s price tag, Kelly Wearstler’s Lighting for H&M Home is the season’s most shoppable design story (though you’ll have to wait until September to drop it).
Shop what’s trending:
lights and lamps
Bolo Aged Brass Table Lamp
troy light
Splendid 1 Light Table Lamp
2. Wall hangings
(Image credit: Who Wears What in the UK)
Style Notes: The cloth has moved from the floor to the wall. Gucci hung tapestries on the walls of its pavilion that showcased the brand’s history, but the most significant (and politically charged) example was Ai Weiwei’s collaboration with the 500-year-old Venetian weaving house Rubelli. It included images of surveillance cameras, handcuffs, and the former Twitter bird logo, woven in gold thread into a continuous silk lampshade that covered the entire showroom.
Loro Piana displayed her extraordinary fabrics as large wall hangings rather than as samples, reimagining textile intelligence as interior art, while Bethan Laura Wood draped a vivid tapestry across the entire side of Palazzo Citterio. when apricot blooms Exhibition of Uzbek crafts.
In the Pierre Frey showroom, artist Johanna de Clisson transforms the garden metaphor of the loom: An intensive installation that treated the act of weaving itself as the subject. This is a trend that’s easy to replicate – maybe not on the front of your home, but definitely on some inside walls.
Shop what’s trending:
anthropology
Nova Tapestry
Freedom
Unframed Freeze Archive
RambleInteriors
Handmade 100% Linen Golden Tapestry
3. Sitting “cocooning”
(Image credit: Faye Toogood Sofa)
Style Notes: Maybe it’s a reaction to the state of global politics right now, but a major theme across many of the installations was the idea of softness and indulging in something too comfortable. Faye Toogood and Tacchini’s butter sofa system set the mood: At a drinks reception, guests looked as if once seated, they were so comfortable they’d never leave. Similarly, Studio Ashby’s spoke back chairs.
Fendi Casa’s new Picachill armchair (a sculptural leather shell wrapped around deep cushioning) was one of the fair’s most photographed pieces, and Kelly Wearstler’s H&M Home collaboration had squishy chairs and sofas piled high in the 17th-century Baroque palace where the brand hosted its collection preview.
Shop what’s trending:
tachini
Butter Modular Sofa
Westwing Collection
Modular Boucle Corner Sofa
Westwing Collection
Modular Boucle Corner Sofa Sophia
4. Return of the Craft
(Image credit: Who Wears What in the UK)
style notes: In a world filled with AI-generated imagery and automated production, the handmade object holds a new weight. Creative director of Dior as well as his own eponymous label, JW Anderson, unveiled a beautiful new collaboration with English basket maker Eddie Gleave, fusing ancient woven structures with contemporary design thinking.
New designers are also keen to participate in the conversation; Bethan Laura Wood and Max Lamb both collaborated with the heritage British ceramic company 1882 Ltd to create sculptures and crockery. For those who really care about the items displayed in their home, the maker is back at the center of the conversation.
Shop what’s trending:
JW Anderson x Eddie Gleave
log basket
firm living
braided laundry basket
Pottery Barn
Beachcomber Hand-Woven Rectangle Baskets
5. Reading is good
(Image credit: Who Wears What in the UK)
Style Notes: For those of us desperate to put down our phones and pick up a book again, good news: one of the most radical statements of Milan Design Week was a room full of books. Jil Sander’s reference library, created with the influential Copenhagen-based magazine apartmentsinvited 60 writers, designers, filmmakers and thinkers – including directors Sofia Coppola and Celine Song and journalist Mona Chalabi – each must nominate a book that shaped them. The books were displayed on chrome lecterns under warm reading light; Each visitor was handed white gloves (which may soon appear on eBay, as coveted as they were) before handling the pages. It was one of the most anticipated events of the week.
Meanwhile, Miu Miu brought the fourth edition of its literary club to the historic Circolo Filologico Milanese; A three-day salon exploring desire, autonomy and the female experience through the work of Annie Ernaux and Ama Ata Aidoo. And where to put all these new books? Well, the fair also had an answer to that, with a display of the season’s most beautiful shelving from USM’s Haller System (of which there was a special edition hosting a special LaBubu) and Porro’s sculptural Rio bookcase by Nao Tamura in folded aluminum, while Lago celebrated 20 years of its Air series with the curved Air Roundy.
In other words, the shelf is being designed just as seriously as the sofa, because what we choose to display says everything about who we are.
Shop what’s trending:
Ingeborg Harms
Jil Sander by Jil Sander
Miu Miu
Miu Miu’s Little Book
Arquette
apartments number 36
