Home style trends 2026: what tradespeople need to know

Summer is the peak season for homeowners committing to big-budget renovations. Enquiries that have been building since January are turning into live projects with serious financial backing. Increasingly, clients arrive with clear, research-driven aesthetics in mind. However, winning these jobs isn’t about becoming an interior designer; it’s about translating their design references into technical, costed specs.

The shift to longevity: 50% of Wickes customers now choose a Shaker-style kitchen. This underlines a broader movement from fast-refresh options toward considered, permanent, and high-quality material selections.

Japandi: calm, minimal, and built to last

The Japandi interior design movement merges Japanese minimalism with Scandinavian warmth. Clients use words like "calm," "natural," and "unfussy" to describe their vision. In practice, this means specifying warm wood tones, stone-effect surfaces, muted neutrals, and the complete elimination of visible visual clutter.

For kitchen fitters, the Wickes Milton Sage range anchors this aesthetic perfectly by offering a Shaker layout with a mock-timber grain that bypasses solid-wood maintenance. To ensure high durability in kitchens and bathrooms, use wood-effect porcelain floor tiles like Wickes River Oak, or specify waterproof luxury vinyl tile (LVT) from the Novocore range for underfloor-heating compatibility. Complete the spec with stone-effect wall tiles in soft greys or putties to achieve the desired high-end look while staying within the client's budget.

Trade opportunity: upselling cohesive, full-room paint applications by matching walls directly to integrated woodwork using soft putties and greyed-neutrals from the Wickes interior paint range.

Wickes products for the job: Milton Sage kitchen range, River Oak porcelain tiles, wood-effect LVT, and neutral interior paints.

Back to traditional: heritage craftsmanship

The trend for ultra-modern, high-gloss finishes is swinging back toward classic permanence. The modern traditional customer prioritises longevity over passing fads, specifying detailed Shaker doors, metro configurations, period-influenced colour tones, and flagstone floor profiles.

The traditional Shaker kitchen 2026 baseline is defined by products like the Wickes Heritage Sage or Tiverton Twilight ranges, featuring solid timber frames and visible woodgrains. For tiling, look beyond basic metro variants and opt for handmade-look ceramics with natural surface variations or large-format stone-effect porcelain.

In bathroom briefs, copy high-value property trends by installing dark metro tiles on the lower half of the walls with contrasting grout, paired with brushed brass or matt black shower enclosures.

Trade opportunity: promoting specialised grease-resistant, washable formulas from the Wickes kitchen paint range to preserve rich heritage blues, greens, and ochres without losing finish quality.

Wickes products for the job: Heritage and Tiverton kitchen ranges, Lucia or Phoenix boutique tiles, period bathroom enclosures, and heritage interior paints.

Bold colour: the end of beige

Homeowners are actively rejecting neutral fatigue by ditching greige for full-room, highly saturated color palettes. This bold colour trend shift focuses on deep forest greens, dark navies, terracotta hallways, and striking, saturated front doors.

Kitchen fitters can leverage this shift by introducing the Tiverton range in Twilight or utilising the Whitworth bespoke paint service, shown here in Heritage Red, which offers ten factory-finished colourways that protect against a messy "paint-it-yourself" finish. For wet rooms, standard emulsions will fail; use moisture-resistant bathroom paints in deep jewel tones to protect your work. For external upgrades, capitalise on quick-turnaround kerb appeal by pairing bold exterior glosses with Chartwell Green composite front doors.

Trade opportunity: using patterned, coloured ceramics like Wickes Melia Sage or Blue to create high-impact feature walls that differentiate your trade portfolio during the project photography stage.

Wickes products for the job: Tiverton Twilight kitchen, Whitworth bespoke colour services, moisture-resistant jewel-tone bathroom paints, and Melia patterned tiles.

Biophilic design: bringing the outside in

Biophilic design actively integrates nature into the built environment through raw stone, organic shapes, and heavily layered textures. According to the 2025 UK Houzz & Home Report, 36% of renovating homeowners prioritised green improvements, making this a high-margin opportunity for tilers, carpenters, and decorators dealing with high-trust clients.

Tilers can anchor this look by specifying large-format stone-effect porcelain, such as Wickes Olympia Grey Polished Sandstone, which mimics natural travertine or slate. For flooring underfoot, specify genuine natural textures such as oak, ash, or walnut effect finishes. Paint choices should focus entirely on botanical greens and soft clay neutrals, while carpenters can add architectural depth by installing structural timber feature wall panelling and bespoke shelving.

Trade opportunity: cross-selling integrated indoor-outdoor transitions by linking internal wood-effect porcelain installations with coordinating external timber or composite garden decking packages.

Wickes products for the job: Olympia Grey sandstone porcelain tiles, flooring, botanical interior paints, structural timber framing, and sheet materials.

Home style opportunities this summer

The most profitable summer contracts will go to tradespeople who can look at a client's digital mood board, recognise the underlying design movement, and immediately outline a reliable, costed material specification.

Browse the extensive tiles, kitchens, flooring, and paint ranges at Wickes today to confidently translate your upcoming summer design briefs into signed-off installation schedules.

Frequently asked questions

Japandi is a blend of Japanese minimalism and Scandinavian warmth, characterised by warm wood tones, stone-effect surfaces, muted neutral colours and clean lines. For a kitchen, the Wickes Milton Sage or Heritage Sage Shaker kitchen units, wood effect porcelain floor tiles and a soft neutral paint palette are the core specification. For bathrooms, stone effect wall tiles in warm grey or off-white paired with wood effect LVT flooring deliver the look at a practical specification.

The Wickes Heritage range, including Heritage Sage, is the strongest match for a traditional brief, with timber-framed Shaker doors and period-influenced detailing. The Tiverton in Twilight (deep blue solid timber frame) is a strong choice for customers wanting a bold traditional kitchen. The full Wickes Bespoke kitchen range covers over 55 styles with design consultant support available.

Always specify a dedicated bathroom paint for bathroom walls, standard emulsion won’t hold up against steam and moisture, and a failed finish damages both the room and the customer relationship. Wickes stocks Dulux Easycare Bathroom and Crown Easyclean Bathroom paints in a wide range of colours, including the deep blues, forest greens and rich jewel tones that bold bathroom briefs require.

Wood effect porcelain tiles, such as River Oak Wood Effect Porcelain Tiles, work brilliantly as flooring for a Japandi scheme. On walls, stone effect tiles in warm grey or soft white work best. Browse the full wood effect tile range and stone tiles at Wickes for the current range.

The most effective package is door plus paint in one conversation. Wickes stocks green composite doors in Chartwell Green and similar heritage tones, as well as Oxford Blue and Buckingham Green gloss exterior paints for timber doors. Browse the front door colour guide at Wickes for customer-facing inspiration you can use at the quoting stage.

No, all four trend directions create work across multiple trades. Japandi and Traditional briefs drive kitchen fitting, tiling, flooring and painting work. Bold Colour drives painting and decorating, tiling, kitchen fitting and door installation. Biophilic Design spans all of these trades, with a particular emphasis on tiling, flooring, timber work and painting. The opportunity for each trade is to understand the full brief well enough to scope their element of it confidently and, where relevant, refer or recommend other specialists for the parts of the project outside their own work.

Biophilic design brings natural materials, textures and colours into the home to create spaces that feel connected to the natural world. In practice, it means specifying natural or natural-effect materials: stone-effect porcelain tiles, engineered or solid wood flooring, botanical paint colours (deep greens, terracottas, warm clays) and timber detailing. It’s a trend that spans multiple trades and typically involves a higher specification budget than a standard refresh.