Preview: Trends & materials to emerge at Surface Design Show 2022

Taking place next week at London’s Business Design Centre, Surface Design Show will again provide architects and designers with an exciting and inspirational range of surface designs and materials as it prepares to ‘bring surfaces back to life’. The show promises to inspire with innovation and creativity both in the form of exhibitors, as well as conversations to challenge and debate around issues that are important for the design industry as a whole.

Speaking before the event opens, trend forecaster and curator of the Show’s Surface Spotlight Live feature, Sally Angharad has given us a sneak peek into the trends that are predicted to direct our designs over the coming year. “The design directions I have highlighted see new surfaces that blur the boundaries of material properties and celebrate original characteristics,” explained Angharad. “With greater focus on offering multiple solutions in one, we see solid materials interact with light and mixed material designs that give the customer greater choice. It is particularly exciting to see biodegradable and recycled ingredients driving aesthetics, with a move towards unique colourways and textures. Once again the Show will set the scene for the next year in terms of design ideas.”

These trends, as highlighted and developed by Angharad, have been divided into the appropriately descriptive categories of Soft Lines, Pattern Inlays, Translucent Layers, Bio Magic and Dappled Colour. We take a closer look at the colours, textures, and technology at play, and some of the makers and manufacturers championing them.

The soft lines trend is all about gentle relief surfaces that evoke a sense of calm by featuring tonal shifts and subtle line work for a pared back aesthetic. Tattoo by Italian wallpaper designer and manufacturer Zambaiti Parati showcases this trend in its embossed wallpaper with beautiful soft tactile lines that echo natural stone.

Raven is Europe’s leading Japanese tile specialist, and Yuki is a glazed porcelain tile from Master Ceramicists, INAX of Japan. The YU-KI name is from YU meaning glaze and KI meaning seasons. The standard white colour represents winter snow, the red represents summer sun, and the black represents the night sky of a mid-autumn day. The gentle curved Yuki border form is naturally created by using split bamboo, one of the most familiar materials for Japanese people.

Pattern Inlays looks at how patterns and motifs are introduced in intricate ways, taking inspiration from marquetry techniques, with modular shapes creating a design. Cora Wood Experience has teamed up Pininfarina to create Miraggio a new wooden floor collection that combines different technologies and materials and features complex geometric patterns inspired by natural elements. The idea behind the collection was to create continuous flooring that blurs the borders between the exterior and interior spaces, uniting them with a unique design, mixing the wooden surfaces with ceramic elements.

Wonderwall Studios brings this theme to life in its premium panelling created from salvaged wood, giving discarded timber a second lease of life. Pheonix is perhaps its most avant-garde design, conceived of furniture-grade hardwoods with geometric and organic patterns that collide.

Image credit: Phoenix Wonderwall Studios

Translucent Layers introduces designers to hard materials which explore translucency to maximise on light and space using geometric shapes and interlocking structures. Jodhpur Blue has developed a range of stunning translucent stone sheets that bring this theme to life. Made using a thin layer of stone with a transparent resin backing to create a beautiful stone sheet that can be back lit to enhance the stones features and characteristics.

Another interesting application of this concept can be seen in the installations by Amron Architectural, a trusted supplier and manufacturer of products for the architectural and design industry worldwide. Providing innovative solutions from the workplace to award winning restaurants, used within their schemes are chains by Kriscadecor. This architectural solution uses intricate chains to create semi-transparent textures and shapes from elegant waves to parallel structures.

Image credit: Kriskadecor

Bio Magic is set to be a key trend for 2022 and beyond as it looks at biodegradable ingredients and materials which continue to offer sustainable solutions with developments in colour dyeing and recycling processes bringing new alternatives to the table using food waste. Johnson Tan, one of 32 ‘New Talents’ at Surface Design Show, has created surfaces using food shell waste including eggshells and coffee which creates a delicate, subtle and translucent material. Also found within the New Talent section is Biotic by Studio Lionne Van Deursen, an ongoing research project and material archive. Microbes are used to grow a biological material which is made of bacterial cellulose. This is made using yeast and bacteria in a fermentation process. During this process bacteria spin nano fibres of cellulose and produce a layer on the surface. When this layer has dried, it becomes a solid material that has comparable properties to leather.

Image credit: Biotic Studio

Also innovating on the leather front, Wildman & Bugby brings ecology leather to the show in the form of a sustainable 100 per cent genuine leather made using Olivenleder a biodegradable tanning agent. The leathers within this collection are tanned with the patented wet-green technology. Using the power of nature, the olive leaf extract used for the tanning agent is exclusively made from the fallen leaves of the Mediterranean olive harvest.

Image credit: Wildman 7 Bugby

The Dappled Colour trend heroes the rise in recycled materials and sees more one-off design aesthetics emerge where repurposed materials define the colour palette, embracing dappled patterns and flecks of contrast instead of solid colour.

The Good Plastic Company produces sustainable panels from 100per cent recycled plastic, in addition each panel is made from a single type of plastic so it can easily be recycled, extending the economic life of the material. There is a huge choice of colours and styles with many having a striking dappled colour effect. Another dappled surface being created from plastic is WasBottle from Benecore, a 100per cent recycled HDPL panel designed to produce tabletops, shelves and partition elements and claddings for interiors. Each panel is unique thanks to the randomness of the recycled material showing variations in colour which creates a vibrant dappled texture.

Image credit: Benecore

We are only touching the surface of these trends here, and it is clear that there is a lot to look out for and discover amongst the exhibitors at this years Surface Design Show. As we explore and discover all this material innovation, take time to listen to the conversations on stage. At a time when interior designers are joining others across the industry and are being challenged by the Interior Design Declares petition, these trends and materials take on a greater significance in the big design picture.

Hotel Designs is proud to be a media partner with this event and editor Hamish Kilburn will be moderating the conversation on the main stage on ‘Why sustainable interiors matter and how we plan to transform the industry’ at 19:45 on February 8. The following day Kilburn will join Conran & Partners Tina Norden on stage as part of the ‘Legends Live’ interview series on the main stage 14:30 February 9.

Main image credit: Zambaiti Parati