We do not run a trend department. What we have instead is nine markets, four seasons of repeat orders, and a reasonably clear view of what stopped selling. That is a narrower lens than a forecast but a more honest one.
The sideboard is back, and it is longer
Two years ago the average sideboard we shipped was 150 cm. It is now closer to 175. Open-plan rooms need a piece that divides without walling off, and buyers have worked out that a long low run does that better than anything taller.
Four doors are outselling three. Legs are outselling plinths by a wide margin, because a raised base makes a heavy piece read light and makes the floor easier to clean, which is the reason retailers actually give.
Finish is moving quieter, not paler
The bleached-everything phase has settled. What is selling now is mid-tone, matt, and visibly wooden: washed naturals, thinned whitewash that lets grain through, waxes rather than lacquers. Gloss is gone from every market we ship to except one.
Colour has not disappeared, it has moved to the front. A natural carcass with a painted, tiled or parquet front is the single fastest-growing configuration in our book.
Gloss has gone from eight of our nine markets. Pattern has moved from the whole piece to the front of it.
Reclaimed is now a documentation question
Reclaimed timber used to be specified for how it looked. It is now specified for what it lets a retailer say, and increasingly the buyer wants that in writing. The questions we field about recovered-material claims have roughly tripled, and they now arrive from buying teams rather than from marketing.
Which means the paperwork is part of the product. A range that cannot be documented is, for a growing number of European retailers, a range they cannot list.
Volumes down, frequency up
The clearest shift is commercial rather than aesthetic. Orders are smaller and more frequent: mixed containers four times a year instead of two full ones. Retailers are holding less stock and asking their suppliers to absorb the flexibility.
For a factory that can only quote a full container, that is a problem. For one set up around mixed loads and low minimums, it is the whole opportunity.
An order book is easier to read against the pieces themselves. The painted, tiled and parquet fronts it is moving towards are separate trades in this building — the carving, parquet and tile benches — and they run across the collections, the Marwar Parquet Sideboard and Pichola Tile Cabinet among them.
Written at the works, Boranada · April 2026
