# To Follow or Not to Follow
# To Follow or Not to Follow
### A study in trends, taste, and knowing the difference
I get asked about trends more than almost anything else. Clients want to know: should the kitchen be warm wood or should I wait until that's "over"? Is my gray sofa dated already? Should I be scared of everything I chose five years ago?
My honest answer is always the same — I'm watching the trends closely. I just don't let them make the decisions.
## Trends are a mirror, not a mandate
Right now the pendulum has swung toward warmth — cozy neutrals, tactile textiles, furniture that looks like it grew rather than got built. A few years ago it was all gray-on-gray minimalism. Before that, lacquered everything and Tuscan kitchens that felt like a vacation home in a country none of us had actually visited.
I've lived through enough of these cycles to know they're not really about the trend itself. They're a mirror. Think back to what you loved in your own home five or ten years ago, and what you couldn't wait to paint over the moment it felt dated. That reaction — the love and the regret both — tells you more about your actual taste than any trend report ever will.
## Where I actually let trends in
Here's the distinction I hold onto for every project: architecture and furnishings are where your personal taste has to live, full stop. Those are the expensive, permanent decisions — the ones you'll be sitting with for a decade, not a season. I never let a passing trend dictate a cabinet profile, a floor plan, or the bones of a room.
But accents? That's where I let a trend have its moment. A pillow in this season's color, a light fixture with a little of-the-moment flair, a vase that nods to whatever's having a cultural moment — those pieces can flirt with what's trending without asking your whole home to commit to it. If it stops feeling right in two years, you swap a lamp, not a kitchen.
That's the real skill in this work — filtering what's new through the lens of what's actually you, and knowing which decisions are worth that filter and which ones aren't.
## The only trend that matters
What draws you into a room. What colors settle you versus energize you. What textures feel like home the moment you touch them. Knowing what you can't stand is just as useful to me as a designer as knowing what you love — sometimes more.
This is the part of the job I take the most seriously. Great design isn't about chasing what's current — it's storytelling, personality, and function, woven together in a way that only works for the person living there.
So yes — stay inspired by what's new. Let an accent piece give a nod to it. But build the architecture and the furnishings around what's true to you. That's the only trend that never goes out of style.
