Blog, Inspiration
Autumn Interiors 2026: What we’re actually seeing
Every September the same articles appear, telling everyone what colour their house should be. Most of them are written a long way from an Irish sitting room.
So here is a different version. This is what the trend forecasters are saying for autumn and winter 2026, checked against what is actually moving through two showrooms in Castlebar and Ennis. Some of it lines up exactly. Some of it does not.
The Colours
Burgundy is the headline shade, and it has been building for a while. What has changed this year is what it gets paired with. Cream, walnut, and olive make a classic autumn scheme, but the more interesting combination is burgundy with pale or powder blue. The cooler colour gives the burgundy room to breathe instead of the two competing.
If you are ready to commit fully, our Evenlode sofa range comes in gorgeous burgundy jacquard fabrics. If you would rather test it first, an accent chair, a cushion or a piece of wall art will tell you whether you can live with it before you spend the money.
Olive green is the one we would actually recommend to most people. It is more forgiving than it sounds. It works with oak, walnut, natural stone and black or brass metalwork, and it has more depth than the pale sages that were everywhere three or four years ago without being as demanding as a brighter green.
Our New-In Brunswick range has come in this season in a dark olive, and the new Trentino ranges by XOOON provides storage in olive or cream.
Clay & terracotta are doing the warming. The useful thing about a muted terracotta rather than a bright orange is that it gives you colour while still sitting happily beside neutrals you already own.
Chocolate brown is having a genuine moment, particularly in leather. Our Alexander & James pieces – the Stax sofa, Nola wing chair, Jude club chair, and the Bailey sofa – all come in a brown leather, and in a sage green velvet if you would rather go the other way. We have limited stocks of all 3.
And powder blue, which is the surprise. It is not being styled as a coastal or summery colour this year. It is turning up alongside brown, burgundy, mustard and natural timber, and it is the thing that stops an all-warm room becoming heavy. Our new Chantilly range is described by the supplier as soft grey, but in the showroom it reads much more like a pale blue.
The Chantilly Bedroom Range by Willis & Gambier. View here
The shapes
This is the biggest shift, and it is not subtle.
Boxy is out and curved is in. Rounded sofa backs, arched cabinets, circular coffee tables. Every major trend forecast we have read this season says the same thing, and more to the point, it is what our suppliers are putting into their new collections.
There is a practical reason it works. A curved sofa softens the hard lines of a room and pushes seating to face inward, which makes a space feel more sociable. It also photographs beautifully, which is doing no harm to its popularity.
Most of our Fama range has been built this way for years. Lenny, Arianne Love and the Bopy sofa bed are all rounded rather than square. The Atticus and Rosberg ranges do the same thing in a more traditional idiom, and the Trenton collection carries the curve into cabinets and tables.
Seats are getting lower. The standard sofa seat height is around 42 to 44cm. The sofas being designed now sit closer to 35 to 38cm, with arms barely above the cushion. It makes a ceiling feel higher and a room feel bigger, and it suits a house where the sitting room is the room everyone ends up in.
The Merano by XOOON and the Rosberg both sit in this territory. Worth knowing before you buy: a low sofa is lovely to sink into and harder to get out of, so if anyone in the house has a bad hip or a dodgy knee, sit on one properly before you decide.
In dining, the matching set is over. The advice this year is to stop buying eight identical chairs and mix materials instead. That sounds like a designer’s indulgence until you see it done – and it is easy with something like the Lexi chair, which comes in four colours in the same frame. Two of one and two of another is a very small change that makes a room look considered.
The Lexi Dining Chair. View here
The textures
Texture is doing the work that bold colour used to do.
Bouclé is still everywhere, alongside velvet and woven fabrics. The whole Fama range can be composed in bouclé type fabrics, and the Lexi chairs are bouclé as standard. Orla Kiely is where to look for velvets.
Ribbed and fluted fronts are the case-goods version of the same idea. The Trenton range uses a slatted pattern across its cabinet fronts, the Elgin range is flutted on the front, sides and back, and Harper by Willis & Gambier does it too. It adds shadow and movement to a flat surface without adding colour.
Weighty timber, not spindly metal. Thin metal frames and glass tops are giving way to substantial wood with visible grain and honest imperfections. Trenton is lacquered oak veneer with the grain left showing, in clay or natural.
And performance fabrics that do not look like performance fabrics. This one matters if you have children or a dog. The modern versions clean easily without the wipe-clean appearance older stain-resistant fabrics had. Our Aquaclean fabrics are the ones we point people towards, and most stains come out with water alone.
Elgin, Trenton & Harper Collections.
Lighting stopped being an afterthought
With the evenings drawing in from here to February, this is the change that makes the most difference for the least money.
Lighting is being treated as a design feature this year rather than something functional bolted to the ceiling. A pendant over a dining table, a floor lamp beside a chair and a small table lamp on a sideboard will change a room more than repainting it will.
The Milky, Rikke and Abby ranges from COCO Maison are the ones we point most people towards. Each comes as a pendant, a floor lamp and a table lamp in the same design, so you can run one shape through a room and have it look deliberate rather than accumulated. They are lovely pieces in their own right and they make a room easy to pull together.
At the top end, Richmond Interiors is where to look. Larger, more sculptural, and priced accordingly. If you want one light to be the thing people comment on when they walk in, that is the range that does it.
Terra Tales: the trend, already put together
If all of the above sounds like a lot to hold in your head, there is a shortcut.
Terra Tales is a trend our brand partner XOOON put together, and it happens to be almost exactly what the forecasters are describing for this autumn. Sand, aubergine and copper clay as the base, with accents of sage green, coral and burgundy. Natural shapes, ribbed patterns, tufted fabrics, velvet, felt, wool and ceramic, and it all sits against dark oak and walnut.
There is an inspiration video on the page page from the Dutch trend watcher Hilde Francq, an explanation of the 60-30-10 rule for using colour in a room, and the full range of pieces that go with it. If you want the look without doing the work, start there.
What we would actually do
Four things, in order of how much difference they make relative to what they cost.
Change the lighting. A lamp in a corner does more for a room in October than almost anything else you could buy.
Add one colour, not five. Pick burgundy or olive or clay and use it in two or three places. A chair, a cushion, a piece of wall art. The 60-30-10 rule on the Terra Tales page is a genuinely useful way to think about it.
Add texture where you touch things. A bouclé chair, a wool throw, a rug. Texture reads as warmth in a way that colour alone does not.
Then, if you are replacing something big, that is where the curves and the low seats and the ribbed timber come in. But do that because you need a new sofa, not because someone said so in September.
And if you want to see any of it in the flesh rather than on-screen, that’s exactly what we have both of our showrooms for.
McDermott’s Furniture & Interiors · Family Run Since 1964
See It in the Flesh
Colour never looks the same on a screen as it does in a room. Both showrooms have these ranges on display, and we will send you home with samples to look at in your own light before you decide on anything.
Castlebar: 094 90 22500 ·
Ennis: 065 68 66233 ·
sales@mcdermotts.ie
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