Lockdown Changed the Way We Treat Our Homes

Over the last year, many of us have been dressing only in clothes with elastic waistbands. Since the start of the pandemic, those able to work from home said goodbye to jeans and body con, with the tracksuit becoming the new little black dress: the staple item around which the rest of a wardrobe is assembled.

But you know this, because a lot has already been said about the way we’ve dressed during lockdown. What there’s been less comment on is how COVID-19 lockdowns have changed another type of fashion – one just as tangible and relevant to our daily lives as clothes.

Over the past year, as we’ve been at home more, our interiors choices have changed too. The places we live in are reflections of ourselves – not only our tastes, but our incomes and wider circumstances – so it makes sense that, as our lives have changed, the way we thought of (and therefore styled) our homes would follow suit. 

But how have our interiors evolved to keep up with us over the past year? And exactly how do current home trends respond to this moment? I asked some interior design and retail experts to explain. 

Unsurprisingly, over the last year the UK homeware market has hugely outperformed sectors like fashion and travel. In September of 2020, the BBC reported that “British retail sales have continued to increase for the fourth consecutive month, boosted by spending on household goods and DIY”.

Paul Firmin, co-founder of the lifestyle brand Earl of East, tells me that from his experience as a retailer of various types of goods, homewares have easily come out on top. In particular, incense and candles (as well as Earl of East’s bath and body range) have been big sellers: “All of our home textiles grew, there was a big uptake in people investing in ceramics, or nicer glassware. Generally speaking, we saw an uplift in all of the homeware categories.”  

For Paul, this was clearly informed by the fact that we wanted to make the most of our homes, considering they were the only places we were really allowed to be. “On a broader spectrum,” he says, customers were after “anything that delivered the idea of comfort”. 

Interior stylist Emma Jane Palin tells me that, in the last year, people have been “looking to interiors that feel cosy, calming and restorative”, adding that she’s noticed a spike in “an overall interest in interior design”, possibly due to the fact that we’ve all been sharing more of our living spaces on social media.  

“I think being at home for extended periods of time gives everyone a little bit of a decorating itch,” Emma says. “While we would normally have the pub to distract us, being forced to spend all of our time at home has really forced us to address anything that annoys us or doesn't make us happy. People have definitely realised the effect that interiors can have on them.” 

Of course, the effect your interiors have on you very much depends on what your interiors are like. If you live in a big city – particularly if you rent, and share a house or flat – these effects might not have been entirely positive. 

“I'd say that the majority of those working at home right now, particularly in London, aren't living and working in large spaces,” says Emma. “People have had to think of small space solutions, and they've also had to work out how to stop the work and life boundaries from blurring.”

As someone who now sleeps and works in the same room, this is something I’ve found particularly difficult over the last year. Zeena Shah, an art director and stylist who runs an Instagram account dedicated to her rented home and the possibilities of interior design as a renter, agrees. “Bedrooms and dining tables have had to turn into offices, and a work-life balance is made even harder when you can't close the door at the end of a busy work day because it's also your bedroom,” she says. 

Zeena points out that, for homeowners, gallery walls have become popular as they make for good Zoom backgrounds, but for renters, these types of improvements are much harder to pull off, both practically and financially. “It will have been harder to ‘quick fix’ that Zoom background for renters,” she says. “Some homeowners are lucky enough to have a dedicated room for their home office, and garden spaces, which make all the difference when you're in a lockdown. Renters have to work out how to improve their spaces and get around these challenges.”

Zeena gives the example of painted arches and circles on walls – easy to paint over upon moving out – as one of the ways she’s seen renters taking matters into their own hands.

Elsewhere, Zeena has observed that “house plants and art prints seem to be the solution for the ‘don't look at my bedroom’ situation we're all in, with brands selling plants delivered to your door and printmakers offering framed options all to aid sales over the pandemic and make things easier for consumers”. Emma also points to “the huge surge in statement candles, like those from Summer Morning Studios”, another micro trend that has appealed to those who don’t own their homes. 

It’s this type of smaller scale trend that has catered to renters over the course of the pandemic. After all, as Sadhbh O’Sullivan put it for Refinery29 recently, for renters, “our awareness that these spaces, for many of us, are never really our own” doesn’t mean that we don’t want to make them feel comfortable or reflective of ourselves for however long we live in them. 

Often, these attempts to imprint a bit of personality on our homes have been buoyed by small businesses which create more bespoke or individual-feeling products, “I’ve seen small makers such as Katie Gilles really grow her small business throughout this time,” says Emma. “I definitely think that consumers are looking to support small interior businesses and find something that’s quite unique.”

As a result of everyone having to spend more time at home, making our homes respond to our personal needs in whatever ways we can, Emma thinks “we’ve actually seen the back of big interior trends as a result of the pandemic”. She explains: “People have started to realise their own personal style a little more, and thought about what they actually need from their home. There has been a shift from brands curating short-term trends to something a little more sustainable and practical – multi-functional living.”

Most recently, though, Paul says Earl of East’s customers have been responding to the fact that we might not be stuck at home for much longer; since the government’s “roadmap” out of lockdown was announced, sales of items outside of the homeware category have surged.

“We’ve seen a bit of an uptake again in perfume, weirdly,” he laughs, “because people are like, ‘Well, I’m going to invest in one now because I’m actually gonna be seeing people.’” The brand is focusing on buying in items like skincare and bags, and Paul says “people have been buying them because they’re new, but also because they know they can go out in a couple of weeks”.

Indeed, while it’s been an interesting time for interiors – particularly in the ways the market has had to respond to the pandemic, and the smaller scale solutions embraced by renters – it seems that homeware might begin to take more of a backseat soon enough.

Describing the response to Earl of East’s new, more vibrant lifestyle offering, Paul puts it best: “People need that after the last year of either being trapped indoors, or having mindfulness or ‘slowing your pace’ shoved down their necks a bit. People just wanna go out and have fun, don’t they?”