5 Design Trends We Saw at Maison&Objet

In a moment when so much design is filtered through screens and speed, Maison&Objet leaned into the opposite as a fair built around touch, craft, and the kind of “wow” that comes from standing in front of work that doesn’t need an explanation.

Trade fairs are supposed to be efficient. You arrive with a list, you walk fast, you collect your leads. But Maison&Objet has always liked being two things at once: a business engine and a cultural staging ground. This edition made that split explicit. Under the theme “Past Reveals Future,” the organizers framed the week as a return to roots, with Fine Craft placed at the center of the story and scenography treated as its own medium rather than a backdrop. “Many visitors spoke to me about this rediscovered ‘wow’ effect,” Philippe Delhomme, Chairman of the Executive Board of SAFI, the organizer of Maison&Objet, said in the fair’s recap, describing an energy that encouraged people to “slow down, observe, and let themselves be surprised.”

The show was organized across six sectors, laid out over seven halls: Signature and Projects, Decor and Design, Fine Craft, Fragrance and Wellness, Gift and Play, and Fashion and Accessories. The fair also used its recurring What’s New? anchors to translate the theme into a set of curated lenses.

Rudy Guénaire, an interior architect behind What’s New? In Hospitality, Elizabeth Leriche, a style expert and trend forecaster curating What’s New? In Decor, and François Delclaux, a foresight expert responsible for What’s New? In Retail, offered a guided read on where the market is headed and what it is borrowing from the past to get there. The Talks pulled the industry into conversation mode, with conferences that moved from hospitality and retail to broader questions about creativity and commerce.

Harry Nuriev, the fair’s Designer of the Year for 2026, wrapped his “Transformism” manifesto in a silver shell that felt oddly predictable and strangely flat. It was a set that prized surface over use, with reflective signage that was hard to read and mandatory shoe coverings that only heightened the sense you were being kept at arm’s length, like the space was built for an inside joke you were not invited to share.

Curatio Village returned after a strong first edition, with Thomas Haarmann selecting a group of pieces that felt less like product placement and more like a proposal for the future of design. In the Fine Craft zone, In Materia pulled visitors toward wood, fiber, glass, clay, and stone, including an entrance moment by the coppersmith Élie Hirsch that signaled, immediately, that craftsmanship was part of the show’s headline.

Then there was Paris itself, which the fair increasingly treats as a second venue rather than a side trip or competition. Maison&Objet In The City mapped nearly 150 addresses into a parallel itinerary, bringing visitors into showrooms, galleries, and special installations across the capital. The strategy of linking the transactional energy of a trade show with the slower intimacy of seeing design in rooms that feel lived in was successful.

The images that follow capture some of the pairings and patterns we kept seeing across the fair, the materials that kept showing up together, and the styling cues brands are betting on next.

Architectural Monochrome Where Material and Light Replace Color

Post Industrial Deco With Rounded Forms and Punchy Color

King Edward’s take on Midcentury Futurist Hedonism

Anything Goes Color Maximalism With a Post Gender Attitude

Performative Mirror World Maximalism

Maison&Objet returns to Paris Nord Villepinte for its September edition from Thursday, September 10 through Monday, September 14, 2026, with the fair’s next announcements set to be unveiled at a press conference in Paris in March 2026.

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