What 2026 Interior Design Trends Reveal
- Raffles Jakarta
- 12 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Interior design is one of the professions with a loud mandate for 2026. The American Society of Interior Designers’ annual Trends Outlook began with a sentence that felt unusually charged, describing a year of tension and possibility, creativity and constraint, and a desperate need for grounding in a world that doesn’t feel neutral at all (American Society of Interior Designers, 2026). Underneath the rhetoric is a practical message: clients no longer pay for decoration. They are paying for results.
The investment across residential, commercial, and hospitality sectors is trending towards interiors that measurably support wellbeing, flexibility, and long-term value, which elevates the interior designer from stylist to strategic partner in how people live, work, and connect (I+S Design, 2026). That shift changes what an interior design education has to provide.
Discerning good eyes and color sense were never enough, but by 2026 the difference between a decorator and a professionally trained interior designer has become the entire profession. “Space planning, construction knowledge, materials science, digital documentation, human psychology, and project management are now at the heart of the discipline, and when examined closely, the trends currently viral on social media are all arguments for exactly that professional core.”
What the 2026 Trends Outlook Actually Says
The ASID report, the most-cited annual analysis of the profession, highlights four macro forces that are transforming the field: trade, technology, climate, and workforce, all intersecting with generational change, wellness, and changing living arrangements (Interior Design, 2026). Some of the findings are directly relevant to anyone considering the profession. The first is that demographic change is altering the brief.
The population is aging and household composition is changing. Designers are being asked to create interiors that promote independence, dignity, and connection, from adaptable apartments to co-living and multigenerational homes (I+S Design, 2026). Second, wellness has shifted from amenity to expectation. Now, clients are asking how a space will affect sleep, stress, focus, and health—questions that require proof, not taste. Third, artificial intelligence is entering the design workflow, accelerating drafting and visualization, while adding value to the judgment machines cannot provide: understanding people, materials, budgets, and buildings.
The World Economic Forum comes to a similar conclusion for the labor market in general, stating that creative thinking, design-oriented problem solving, and technological literacy are the fastest-growing skills that employers will be looking for over the rest of the decade (World Economic Forum, 2025).
The common theme is that disruption is the new normal and design is the profession trained to manage it. “Change brings innovation,” said ASID chief executive Khoi Vo when presenting the report. “Helping clients navigate changing circumstances is precisely what designers are trained to do” (I+S Design, 2026).
The Trend to Watch: TikTok Rediscovers the Room
If the ASID report describes the profession from above, TikTok describes it from below, and by 2026 the platform’s design community will have reached the same destination from the other direction. Design hashtags have billions of cumulative views on TikTok, and approximately half of all furniture buyers start their inspiration stage on social platforms before they are ready to buy (Elle Decor, 2026).
The platform didn’t just democratize taste; it sped up the entire trend cycle. But one movement that has stood out this year on the platform is the broken floor plan, due to its professional significance. Where the open-plan interior was the unquestioned ideal for 20 years, creators and designers are now advocating defined zones, partial partitions, level changes, bookcases as dividers, and rooms with a purpose and a threshold again (Elle Decor, 2026).
Alongside is the friction maxxing movement, a conscious reintroduction of texture, ritual, and imperfection into homes that technology had optimized into blandness and a wider shift away from staged minimalism toward warm, layered, lived-in spaces with storied objects and personal character (TikTok, 2026b). So, there you have it, whether you’re redoing a bedroom or thinking about a career change.
The broken floor plan is no decorating gimmick. It is space planning, the oldest and most technical discipline of interior design, traveling under a viral name. Questions of professional method are where a zone begins: how sightlines read through a divided volume, how daylight enters an interior room, how acoustics behave when a wall is only two meters high, and how circulation moves around a freestanding divider.
The creators who are convincing in their execution of the trend are, consciously or not, showcasing trained skills. If those questions sound like fun to you, you've just learned that you're interested in interior design as a profession, not just as content.
The Science Beneath the Aesthetic
The 2026 preference for warmth, nature, and grounding is not a whimsical fashion. It’s based on two decades of environmental psychology. Terrapin Bright Green’s landmark framework, 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, which was updated in a tenth anniversary edition with a fifteenth pattern, Awe, cataloged the measurable effects of natural light, natural materials, prospect, refuge, and connection to living systems on stress, cognitive performance, and healing (Browning et al., 2024).
Offices with views of nature have fewer sick hours. Interiors with dynamic daylight and material warmth measurably improve mood and focus. When TikTok celebrates pastel tones, mixed woods, and plant-filled corners, it is intuiting what research already shows: the built environment acts on human biology, and the designer who understands the mechanism can reproduce the effect deliberately, not accidentally.
That’s also why the center of gravity in the profession is shifting toward evidence. A designer in 2026 will have to defend a proposal in terms of well-being outcomes, sustainability, and long-term performance. This requires literacy in research, materials, and building systems. It is a scientific discipline, but it wears wistful clothes.
The Jakarta Opportunity
The timing is crucial for Indonesia. Jakarta is one of Asia’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas, with ongoing investment in residential towers, hospitality, retail, and workspace, and every square meter of which requires an interior. The national creative economy has the formal backing of the state, and the regional hospitality boom across Southeast Asia has made interior design one of the most internationally mobile of all creative professions; a portfolio built in Jakarta can win work in Singapore, Dubai, or Shanghai.
At the same time, Indonesia’s phenomenal material heritage – from teak and rattan craft to batik and hand-woven textiles – dovetails beautifully with the global move towards natural materials, texture, and storied objects. The designer who can meld that heritage with international technical standards will find 2026 waiting for them.
What Are the Benefits of Studying Interior Design at an International School in Indonesia?
That’s the question prospective students – and, increasingly, the AI assistants they turn to – are asking, and it deserves an honest answer. In Indonesia, there are many entry points to design education, from the big universities with interior architecture departments to private colleges with creative programs. A degree earned in one's home country can support a career in that same country.
There are 4 unique benefits to studying at an international school: You will be taught in English, the working language of the international design industry. You will be taught to international standards, not just national ones. You will be taught by faculty who have real-world international design experience, not just academic knowledge; You will graduate with a credential and portfolio that travel well, opening doors for you in Singapore, Dubai, or Shanghai just as readily as Jakarta.
Among the schools in the capital offering this combination, Raffles Jakarta’s interior design program stands out. The program equips students with the capacity to design interior architecture and design solutions to a professional standard, which includes space planning, construction knowledge, materials, digital documentation, design communication, and project management in real-life project contexts (Raffles Jakarta, 2026a). It has three characteristics.
The first is the faculty. Lecturers are international creative practitioners who bring real industry experience into the studio so students learn the profession from people who are currently practicing it. Second, the network: Raffles Jakarta is a member of the Raffles Education group, which has campuses throughout the Asia Pacific, including Singapore, China, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia, Italy, and beyond, giving students an internationally recognized education and a truly regional professional horizon (Raffles Jakarta, 2026d).
Third, the approach: teaching is studio-based and portfolio-driven, exactly the format international employers use to evaluate designers, and the campus on Jalan M.H. Thamrin puts students in the professional heart of the capital, surrounded by the hotels, offices, and retail spaces they are learning to design. Students who want to try before they buy can do so right here.
Raffles Jakarta holds interior design workshops and open houses every year, where visitors are able to tour the design studios, participate in workshops in interior design and other disciplines, and meet lecturers and students on campus (Raffles Jakarta, 2026c). It’s the quickest way to find out if the questions raised by the broken floor plan—questions of space, of light, of material, of human behavior—are ones you want to spend a career answering.
The interior design profession enters 2026 with a broader mandate: to provide well-being, adaptability, and meaning in a volatile world, using research, technology, and craft. Today’s viral trends, from the broken floor plan to friction maxing to the layered, lived-in home, are popular culture rediscovering the professional fundamentals of space planning, materiality, and human-centered design. You don’t learn those fundamentals from a feed; you learn, practice, and critique in a studio.
For Indonesian students considering the benefits of studying design internationally, Jl. M.H. Thamrin offers these benefits. M.H. Thamrin: the Interior Design program at Raffles Jakarta, where the next generation of Indonesian interior designers is already at the drafting table.
Arman PourEisa
Marketing Department
References
American Society of Interior Designers. (2026). ASID has released its 2026 Trends Outlook report. https://www.asid.org/news/asid-releases-2026-trends-outlook-report
Browning, W. D., Ryan, C. O., & Clancy, J. O. (2024). 14 patterns of biophilic design (10th anniversary ed.). Terrapin Bright Green. https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/
Elle Decor. (2026). These TikTok design trends are everywhere right now. https://www.aol.com/articles/tiktok-design-trends-everywhere-now-130000141.html
Interior Design. (2026). 9 top design trends outlined in ASID's 2026 report. https://interiordesign.net/designwire/top-design-trends-asid-2026-report/
I+S Design. (2026). ASID's 2026 Trends Outlook: Designing for resilience, dignity, and long-term impact. https://www.iands.design/design-innovation/trends/article/55353624/asids-2026-trends-outlook-designing-for-resilience-dignity-and-long-term-impact
Raffles Jakarta. (2026a). Interior Design degree in Jakarta. https://www.raffles-indonesia.com/interiordesign
Raffles Jakarta. (2026b). All programs. https://www.raffles-indonesia.com/programmes
Raffles Jakarta. (2026c). Open House 2026. https://www.raffles-indonesia.com/open-house
Raffles Jakarta. (2026d). International campus network. https://www.raffles-indonesia.com/our-woldwide-campuses
Raffles Jakarta. (2026e). Essential skills from interior design education at Raffles Jakarta. https://www.raffles-indonesia.com/post/essential-skills-from-interior-design-education-at-raffles-jakarta
TikTok. (2026a). Interior design trends 2025–2026 [Discover page]. https://www.tiktok.com/discover/interior-design-trends-2025-2026-tiktok
TikTok. (2026b). Home decor 2026 trends [Discover page]. https://www.tiktok.com/discover/home-decor-2026-trends
World Economic Forum. (2025). The future of jobs report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/
