2022 Design Trends: Bubble Mania Won’t Burst
Bubble Sofa by Roche Bobois. Photo by Michel Gilbert.
Safe to say, bubbles are in right now—and have been for a while. Call them blobs, orbs, curves, or cells, bubbles are everywhere.
Who can blame us for loving the beauty of the bubble when it can represent so many things? In addition to being festive and celebratory like the satisfying pop of a champagne bottle, more than anything else bubbles are protective. As I wrote last month, we associate bubbles with safe spaces, places that protect us from both dangerous germs, as well as opposing points of view. Even market bubbles shelter us from economic reality—until they burst.
In design, bubbles typically have one or more of the following characteristics—
they are filled with air,
they are round, spherical, or blobby,
they are iridescent and/or transparent, and most of all,
they generally appear in multiples—a single circle does not a bubble conjure (unless it possesses some of these other characteristics).
Screenshot from Architonic’s website showing the steep rise in bubble popularity. Click to expand.
For those who don’t believe that major cultural events have little effect on our home décor choices, the bubble is set to prove you wrong. Just like the Hemline Index, which correlates skirt lengths to stock prices, bubbly decor tends to pop up during key periods of social, political, and economic events. In 2016, as the Presidential election drove us to consider how personal filter bubbles affected outcome predictions, online design showcase Architonic added 61 new products named after the mighty bubble. This number represents a two-fold increase over the previous year. Furthermore, an additional 60 new “bubbles” were released on the site over the following four years. What makes these numbers so interesting is that they represent a 400% increase of bubbly products introduced on the site since 2002—and this doesn’t even consider other products with bubble-like descriptive names. While Architonic’s listings are not a complete picture of products introduced in the year, they do give insight into the industry.
Is it any surprise, then, that just as the world was discussing the housing bubble in 2008, Pelle launched its Bubble chandelier? Or when economists warned of an expanding stock market bubble in 2014, Roche Bobois released their Bubble chair? More recently, as the WHO announced Omicron a “Variant of Concern” reigniting fears of a return to pandemic lockdowns, Google searches for “bubble tile” and “bubble chair” increased 200- and 250-percent, respectively. Let’s face it, since the 2016 election, bubbles have become an important part of our lexicon, and our society.
Because this Bubble Mania won’t be bursting anytime soon, my upcoming posts will explore the different kinds of bubbles popping up in décor today, as well as what we might see in 2022. Be sure to follow me on Instagram for more on these design trends and new post alerts.
Coming Up:
