Cold, wet and dark or cosy, toasty and snug? The Autumn/Winter season is open to many interpretations, but one thing is certain: northern hemisphere consumers will spend more time inside over the next few months. That means a greater focus on home decor, home improvement and home organisation.
Here’s the key autumn homeware trends you need to know.
Home Décor
From curtains and cabinets to doormats and dinnerware, brands can boost autumn sales by ensuring their product listings include seasonal keywords and seasonal trends. For autumn 2023, that means:
- Cosy. Be it lazy furniture and warm lighting or soft rugs and earthy ceramics, autumn shoppers are preparing their homes for the annual ‘hibernation’. Natural fabrics, cottage-style ornaments, cute trinkets and tactile textures will be in high demand to transform the cold season into the cosy season.
- Vintage. ‘Second-hand’ and ‘vintage’ are not only bywords for ‘homey’, but also align with 2023’s overarching sustainability and cost-saving trends. For brands with antique-style or nostalgia-infused products, it’s a great time to launch on marketplaces that specialise in used and worn items (i.e. eBay for general items, Selency for furniture or Thrift Plus for fashion).
- Patterns. One of 2023’s main interior design trends has been the explosion of playful shapes and geometric patterns. As more people look for household items featuring checks, florals, stripes and angles to make their homes more vibrant in the darker nights, brands should ensure their products’ patterns are clearly evident in photos and content descriptions.
Home Improvement
During lockdown, Brits spent a whopping £110 billion on home improvements, but the renovation trend has outlasted the pandemic. According to GFK, two-thirds of UK consumers intended to renovate or decorate their home in 2023.
- Repairs. With colder and wetter weather on the horizon, ‘must-do’ repairs are first in line when it comes to interior home improvements. Consumers tend to look for trusted DIY brands (as they don’t want their homes falling down), so consider listing your products on trusted sites like diy.com (B&Q’s marketplace gets 250 million+ annual visits).
- Renovations. On the flip side of repairs, renovations are the ‘nice-to-do’ home improvement. After a summer focusing on outdoor upgrades (i.e. garden and patio), attention turns inwards during the autumn with walls & flooring (38%) and bathrooms (24%) considered the top two areas for interior DIYers in GFK’s survey.
- Renewal. For home improvers not quite ready to pick up tools, autumn is also the season spent conjuring plans for home-based changes, using cosy nights on the sofa to scour the internet for inspiration. Social media is awash with home improvement ideas (i.e. #wallpanelling received 24 million views on TikTok) and with more people spending time at home (and therefore online), now is the time for brands to double down on social media promotions.
Home Organisation
What’s the other major homeware trend on social media? Home organisation. From Netflix shows on decluttering to Instagram-ready snaps of perfect pantries, consumers are looking to organise their homes with winter’s hosting season on the horizon. In particular:
- Comfortable workspaces. 44% of UK workers work remotely some of the time. For some, that means kitting out a spare room as a home office. For others, that means creating a workspace wherever they have space. But no matter the home, all remote workers want to create a comfortable work environment to get through the dark afternoons, which means non-traditional homeware products (i.e. electronics) can jump on the home trend bandwagon.
- Kitchen storage. Spice cupboards. Pantry shelves. Fridge containers. Hot drinks stations. Kitchen storage ideas have been viewed 55 million times on TikTok as consumers look to declutter chopping areas and stylise their storage solutions. This decluttering trend extends beyond the kitchen, so brands should promote the multi-uses or smaller sizes of their products where possible.
- Natural products. Think Tupperware, think plastic, right? Not any more. With sustainability and home decor as two key autumn 2023 trends, there’s a greater focus on natural products, such as glass Tupperware and wooden containers. With consumers wanting a natural feel in their homes, it’s important for brands to highlight the sustainability of their homeware materials.
How Brands Jump on these Trends
You don’t even have to sell homeware goods to take advantage of autumn’s homeware focus. From raising awareness of your brand by listing products on marketplaces with increased autumn traffic to ensuring your product keywords chime with seasonal trends, there are many ways brands can tweak their marketing strategy to boost their Q4 sales. For more advice, get in touch with eManaged.