2020 is going to be a year of wellness reevaluation. Everyone needs a bit more balance and this is the year to get serious about it. Here are the five major wellness trends you can expect to see more of in 2020:

Ethical Eating: A Case Study in a Custom Kitchen

When it comes to dieting and consumption, the wellness community is trending away from telling people what they should look like and inching closer towards a focus on what you should feel like and that is incredibly subjective and needs to be customized. Wellness is moving away from a one size fits all approach. Additionally, ethical consumption is becoming a priority! (Think: the rise of beyond meat burgers, and personal edible gardens to cut down on labor issues/environmental impacts of importing and shipping, etc). Recently, we had the pleasure of designing the home of professional vegan chefs and combined both of these principles. Because the chefs don’t cook with oils, there was no need for a range hood, which allowed u to go really modern and seamless aesthetically. And access to the chef’s fresh edible garden was imperative. 

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Meditation, Yoga, and Wellness Resorts

International travel and luxury hotels have always inspired our designs and now the trend in hospitality design is incorporating wellness activities like yoga classes, meditation centers, and full beautiful gyms as part of their appeal. Fancy gyms like Equinox are getting in on the hospitality game – designing full resorts around traveling workout junkies the way that Soho House and coworking spaces started popping up around the world to appeal to the traveling workaholic. The brands doing this also speak to a craving for American familiarity while traveling internationally (like visiting a McDonalds in when in Paris, or Starbucks in Shanghai). Make of that what you will… Similarly, meditation centers like Inscape in NYC (which we visited earlier this year!) have a similar appeal. 

Ethical Clothing and Wearable Ideologies 

Our homes and what we wear are extensions of ourselves- reflections of how we want to present ourselves to the world and now wearing our ideologies, and ideology as presentation, has become as culturally important as holding those ideologies internally. Perhaps this is the result of an increasingly visual culture? In any case, if it applies a bit of social pressure on others to shop local and ethically, we’re all for it! Expect to see the term ‘Slow Fashion’ popping up a lot more. We hope this will actually lead to people pumping the break on the clothing shopping and view it as less disposable, the way they’ve always viewed their furniture (you don’t get a new couch every season, after all!)

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Death Acceptance & Designing for Longevity

We’re reevaluating what we used to call ‘Forever Homes,’ and calling it what they really are – Longevity spaces, or, to phrase it more bluntly: designing the home you’ll probably die in. But that doesn’t have to be bleak! Death, afterall, is what gives our lives shape and meaning and designing your home with that in mind can be incredibly empowering and a fascinating display of your priorities. Writers like Caitlin Doughty are doing wonders to shift the cultural paradigm around this topic. (Highly recommend her latest book From Here to Eternity, part travel diary, part radical death acceptance)!

Stylish and sustainable – This bathroom was designed for our client’s mother to age in place, comfortably.

An End to Sleep Shame: Reevaluating Work and Reclaiming Our Time

When Ariana Huffington fell and hit her head in the shower, she narrowly survived a brain bleed that was a major wake up call: burnout is very real and it almost cost her her life. Automation & being editorial about including tech in our spaces is a major trend in how we’re designing – removing electronics from the bedroom, including things like sleep trackers, customizable lighting schemes, etc to optimize sleep and prioritize it.

Craving more balance in your life? Be sure to check out Lori Dennis’ book The Quadrant Life: