Don’t miss these essential trends that will shape products, design and creativity over the coming year.

1. COLOUR: Digital Lavender

Coloro + WGSN: Colour of the Year 2023

Coloro’s colour of the year isn’t just your average lavender... it has a zingy digital quality that makes it come alive in both real and virtual worlds. It’s serene and calming too, making it ideal for wellbeing products, candles and cosy home accessories - but you’ll see it coming in to the fashion sphere too.

2. INTERIORS: weird maximalism

Haas Brothers Homeware / Dezeen.com

In a world that just gets weirder everyday, design trends are responding with ever more maximalist creations, according to Dezeen. For homewares, think bold, rich colour palettes, high octane prints and surrealist touches. Homewares and interiors should bring a sense of fun and lightness - creating escapism from the sometimes bleak outside world. Go big on colourful accents in unexpected places such as kitchen cupboards, bold wallpapers or decadent detailing in hardware and lighting.

3. BEAUTY: Beauty Snacking

Foreo's Iris 2 eye massager

It’s snacking but not as you know it. According to the Swedish beauty institute FOREO, Beauty Snacking means skincare in small doses, throughout the day - think small rituals at your desk, micro indulgences and creating pamper ‘moments’. As the cost of living bites, small beauty treats become a way to ‘indulge’ without the guilt. Snacking products include refreshing eye massagers, uplifting roll-on essential oils and hand masks to slather on while you’re working from home.

4. TECH: AI-creativity

Images created with Midjourney

Artificial Intelligence has tipped into mass this year, infiltrating the way we work, play and create. AI software such as Midjourney or Dall-e 2 convert text descriptions or audio into detailed imagery, mind-blowing deep fakes and more. AI is already being incorporated into the creative process across design industries - leading to endless possibilities for the human imagination.

Images created with Dall-e 2

5. FOOD: Planet-friendly ingredients

WhatIF Foods

Alt-ingredients have long focused on benefits to our own health and bodies, but now a whole host of underused foods that can benefit the planet are being rediscovered, say forecasters WGSN. Ingredients such as TEFF flour, Moringa, Algae and the Bambara nut stand out for their resilience to droughts, ability to regenerate the soil, encourage biodiversity and offer an alternative to monocrops such as wheat. Look out for innovator brands like WhatIF Foods, which creates noodles and milk with the regenerative, climate-friendly Bam nut.