With Clerkenwell Design Week looming, we’re curious to see which office trends will emerge in 2020.
Conscious Co-Working
There are some seriously impressive co-working spaces popping up, especially in our home town of Brighton. Originally aimed at the millennial market, co-working spaces have transformed from a couple or chairs being thrown together to incredibly well thought out workspaces with different zones for work, collaboration and focus.
Straying from fixed desks is also kind on the pockets as it reduces desk vacancy rates. We think that we will be seeing a lot more offices that are undergoing re-designs adopt the co-working design style over the next couple of years. The furniture on the market is starting to reflect this new demand with contemporary pieces coming to the market that focuses on flexibility such as the Pailo range from The Senator Group.
Sustainability
If you’ve been following what we’ve been up to recently, you might have seen that we launched a trial recycling incentive. We’ve now turned this into a full-blown service after we successfully saved near to 1000kg of furniture from landfill over just 4 weeks.
It might be a popular buzz-word, but sustainability is important to us. So much so, that we are the anomaly company paying our clients to professionally recycle furniture that can’t be used anymore. On top of that, we are replacing with products made from sustainable materials by manufacturers that offer a minimum warranty of 5 years, promoting our strong belief that you should buy once and buy right.
Sustainable fabrics and materials are becoming more accessible and we hope that they will start trending by 2020.
Biophilia
As a nation that’s a little bit obsessed with houseplants, you won’t be surprised to hear that office plants are here to stay.
As much as we love the mossy walls of 2018, we’re finding that the trend is shifting towards an abundance of trailing hanging plants. Suspending from shelving and ceilings they can make cost-effective decoration and space dividers. Our green-thumbed Project Coordinator Rachelle Dare wrote about how beneficial office plants are here.
Make the most of outdoor spaces
Our fingers are firmly crossed that we will get a decent summer this. When we recently interviewed Brighton based search marketing agency Propellernet. Co-Owner and Managing Director Nikki Gatenby mentioned that the icing on the cake of their near perfect offices would be some outside office space. With increasingly hectic schedules we underestimate the regenerative powers of a few gulps of fresh air. We are progressively being asked to provide long-wearing furniture for outdoor spaces that can endure the great British summer (lots of rain, hail and possibly snow).
The demise of useless canteens and café’s
Ok, so this title might be slightly misleading but with the square footage of office space getting increasingly more expensive, we predict that the canteen, café, and cafeterias will be culled first.
This isn’t to say that break out space isn’t extremely important in workspaces, but we imagine that in 2020 these spaces will be reimagined into multifunctional spaces that will work from 9-5, not just 12-2.
We are already seeing some imaginative solutions permeating the market to combine the meeting room and the coffee point. Staggered auditorium seating (that doesn’t require a site survey hurrah!) such at platforms from Connection Furniture is a great alternative to your run of the mill high volume stacking chairs, and it means you can easily turn your eating area into a meeting area.
Have fun with fabrics
We always eagerly await the trend report from commercial fabric makers Camira fabrics to land on our doorstep. A credible compass of the colour palettes and textures that will be prominent on the commercial furniture scene next year, Camira have spoken, and the trends next year look refreshingly different.
Focusing on fun, brave and bold fabrics, they have moved away from tepid tones and moved towards fun and playful fabrics.
For the nature lovers amongst us, they have also built a harmonious palette consisting of earthy tones and heavily textured fabrics.
