Furniture Consumer Insights

Trend - Grounding sheets, made with conductive materials like silver or carbon, embody a wellness trend aimed at harnessing the Earth's natural energies for health benefits. By allegedly transferring the Earth's electrons to the body, these sheets replicate the benefits of barefoot grounding, promising improved sleep, reduced inflammation, and greater relaxation.

Insight - There is a growing consumer desire for holistic and nature-inspired wellness practices, especially in an era of digital overwhelm and disconnection from natural environments. This growing trend in wellness reflects a desire for solutions that combine the best of modern science with traditional wisdom. For brands, this presents an opportunity to innovate within the wellness space, offering products that promise to reconnect our bodies with the Earth's natural healing properties.

Trend - ADHD chairs are designed to support movement and focus by providing subtle stimulation. These features help concentration and alertness, addressing the challenges faced by many with ADHD in maintaining focus, especially in environments that require prolonged periods of sitting, such as classrooms and offices.

Insight - The growing recognition of ADHD is part of a broader push towards inclusivity and the creation of spaces designed for diverse needs, with the goal of challenging conventional standards. This reflects a societal embrace of neurodiversity, with the understanding that customizing environments can significantly help communities that have been mainly underserved. As advocacy for neurodiversity grows, brands have a golden opportunity to pioneer in neuro-inclusive design, paving the way for spaces that are both more equitable and effective.

Trend - Interior and exterior design firms are releasing collections of reeded furnishings. The reeded pattern is used to give more depth and texture to minimalist pieces without adding unsustainable materials. These pieces are designed to complement both personal and professional aesthetic trends.

Insight - Homeowners and renters looking to update their home design themes are prioritizing sustainability and versatility. This subset of consumers is most interested in keeping up to date with the latest trends, and are willing to invest in products that fit modern aesthetics while supporting their core values. As a result of this, brands are adopting the evergreen minimalist aesthetic with new notes of sustainability and personalization, adding depth to furnishings for trendy consumers.

Trend - Companies are creating chairs with built-in cooling fans positioned on the bottom or back of the chair. These cooling fans help balance the user's temperature while sitting for long periods, such as when working or gaming. The cooling fans reduce sweat and prevent overheating.

Insight - Office workers, professional gamers, and many other jobs in the modern world are faced with long hours spent sitting in chairs. While these workers do have various breaks for health reasons, they still desire more comfortable working conditions during long-hour sessions. One such reason for discomfort is leather chairs in warm temperatures becoming sticky. Brands are addressing this discomfort by building temperature-lowering solutions into premium office furniture.

Trend - Gaming and tech brands are releasing simulation chairs designed to completely immerse players in a game. Simulation chairs often mimic the feeling or design of a specific game feature for a multisensory experience. These chairs range from realistic car seats for racing games to large mecha-like gaming stations that replace the need for a dedicated room.

Insight - While the average computer chair focuses on comfort and aesthetics, racing and simulation chairs are often desired for their immersive and realistic nature. These chairs are commonly purchased by consumers looking to disconnect from everyday stress and fully immerse themselves in a virtual world. Content creators and professional gamers also purchase these chairs to reinvent their favorite titles for live streams and videos, as they usually feature visually appealing elements.

Trend - Gaming furniture and peripheral brands are launching gaming-focused chairs with built-in surround sound speaker systems. These chairs are immersive and comfortable, offering directional audio without the discomfort of a headset, enabling longer, more enjoyable gaming sessions.

Insight - Modern gamers continually seek devices that improve their performance, comfort, or experience. These players seek whatever products offer a competitive edge without breaking the bank. This involves purchasing multipurpose devices, such as multiplatform peripherals or heavily adjustable chairs for ergonomics. Brands have responded to this pressure by launching furniture with smart features. These appease the consumer's desire for increased performance, cost-saving, and personal comfort.

Trend - Brands are creating retro-style kitchen appliances equipped with modern technology. These appliances offer nostalgic designs, bringing a natural, simpler feel to a modern kitchen. These products do not compromise on function or convenience, as they feature modern smart technologies.

Insight - Nostalgia is an evergreen trend when considering customer motivations. When a modern product boasts the right balance between function and nostalgia, the target customer is more likely to purchase the product due to the inherent emotional connection. While many industries embrace nostalgia, such as the entertainment industry offering remakes of past content, others look at nostalgia as a gimmick. This places pressure on more industries to incorporate nostalgia into functional products.

Trend - Now that work-from-home setups have become the norm, many consumers have settled into this new lifestyle. Now, brands are offering functional but design-friendly pieces that help people settle in to their home offices in the long-term.

Insight - The pandemic has brought on many lifestyle changes for consumers, some of which have become the norm. Virtual work is part of this shift, with more workers having no plans to return to their offices on a permanent basis. The lifestyle shifts required to settle into long-term virtual work includes everything from home design to various wellness rituals.

Trend - Furniture brands are prioritizing carbon-neutral production as they look to reduce their environmental impact and market themselves as being friendly to the envrionment, as demand for eco-conscious brands grows.

Insight - As eco-consciousness grows among consumers, more are looking for ways they can change their lifestyles and purchase habits in order to reduce their impact. For some, micro changes are the most realistic due to cost-restrictions. Those who can afford larger investments are making more macro lifestyle changes in order to adjust.

Trend - Furniture brands and interior designers are combining stylistic influences from Japan and Scandinavian countries to inform a style hybrid called "Japandi." Spaces with this aesthetic direction combine natural materials and a pared-back color palette, creating interiors that are minimal and warm.

Insight - Contemporary consumers in faced-paced urban centers are looking to balance the demands of their daily lifestyle with a comfortable home environment. In this space, many are prioritizing minimalist designs and simple solutions that can optimize and elevate their living situation, without compromising on aesthetic appeal. When these needs are met, consumers feel more relaxed and can comfortably recharge for the next day.