15 July 2026
What we are specifying this season
Fluted velvet, unpolished stone, and lamps that are actually bright enough to read by.
Three things are turning up in nearly every scheme we are drawing at the moment, and one thing has finally gone away.
Fluted and channelled upholstery
Channelled velvet has moved from a statement piece to a default, and for good reason: the ribbing catches light across the length of a sofa, so a large piece of furniture stops reading as a slab. It photographs well, but more usefully it looks better in the evening than a flat-upholstered equivalent.
Stone with the polish left off
Honed and unfilled travertine, tumbled limestone, and marble with a soft finish rather than a mirror. Polished stone shows every water mark in a room people actually live in. Honed stone ages instead of degrading.
Lighting that works
The single most common fault we find in a finished house is that there is not enough light to read by anywhere in it. Layered lighting is not a style choice, it is the difference between a room used after 6pm and one that is not.
Five lamps at 400 lumens will beat one ceiling fitting at 2,000 every time.
And the thing that has gone
Grey. Entirely. We have not specified a cool grey scheme in over a year, and nobody has asked for one.