Decorex 2026 Highlights: Craftsmanship, Colour and Interior Design Inspiration
Sculptural lighting, expressive rugs and beautifully worked natural materials brought character to Decorex 2026 at Olympia London. Here are the collections and ideas shaping the conversation around luxury interiors.
October brings a particularly busy stretch of London’s design calendar, but Decorex holds a distinct place within it. This is where the details of an interior come into focus: the weave of a rug, the finish of a cabinet handle, the quality of light falling across a room.
Held from 11 to 14 October at Olympia London, Decorex 2026 brought together more than 280 exhibitors spanning furniture, decorative lighting, textiles, architectural details and bespoke craftsmanship. Alongside new collections, installations and live demonstrations explored how materials and technology can enrich everyday spaces.
Across the show, warmth and individuality emerged as compelling themes. Decorative surfaces, coloured glass and tactile finishes offered plenty of inspiration for interiors with personality, while specialist makers gave familiar materials fresh possibilities.
Warm Colours and Layered Textures
The interior design ideas emerging from Decorex 2026 suggest a growing confidence in combining expressive decoration with comfortable, understated foundations.
Creams, browns and earthy neutrals provided a versatile backdrop for richer textiles and decorative accents. Burgundy, ochre and amber appeared in rug collections, while coloured glass introduced depth through reflection and transparency. Texture supplied another dimension, from sculpted upholstery to woven fibres and worked timber.
The appeal of this approach lies in its flexibility. A room can feel calm while accommodating a patterned rug, an unusual lamp or a beautifully detailed piece of furniture. Each element contributes to the composition without demanding that everything match.
For designers and homeowners, the inspiration is in those relationships: a smooth surface beside a textured weave, a curved silhouette against architectural lines, or a saturated colour balanced by natural wood.
Decorative Lighting with Sculptural Appeal
Lighting was a particularly expressive category at Decorex 2026, with new collections exploring the possibilities of glass, colour and traditional references.
Cocovara Lighting brought a botanical touch to Decorex 2026 with a sculptural pendant that appeared to grow across the wall. A slender brass-toned stem supported glass shades resembling opening flowers, set against a deep burgundy backdrop. Handmade in the UK, Cocovara’s bespoke lighting combines decorative artistry with a sense of movement, showing how a single piece can bring warmth and character to an interior.British lighting studio Rothschild & Bickers introduced Diamond Chochin, inspired by Japanese lanterns, alongside its Twisted Optic collection. Diamond Chochin interprets the lantern’s atmospheric qualities through hand-blown glass, with a textured surface that catches the light and decorative fringe that adds softness and movement.
These pieces invite consideration as objects throughout the day. Their colour, proportions and surface detail contribute to an interior even before they are illuminated.
Corston Architectural Detail brought greater flexibility to its lighting range with its first rechargeable light. Joining the Cotswold collection, the design combines USB charging and touch dimming with the brand’s familiar aesthetic. New linen-cotton shades and the adjustable solid-brass Richmond Desk Lamp expanded the collection further.
Portable lighting offers useful freedom when planning a space. It allows a pool of light to move between a dining table, a reading corner and a bedside setting as needs change.
The Soho Lighting Company explored a more architectural direction, introducing a collection that included transparent switches and sockets. Such details open up possibilities for integrating practical fittings into a wider decorative scheme.
Immersive Interiors and the Influence of Light
Beyond individual products, The Beach House by Homeplay explored how lighting changes the experience of an entire room.
Created with Hill House Interiors and Matthew Hill Bespoke, the installation compressed a day of changing natural light into three minutes. Lutron’s intelligent lighting with Ketra worked alongside concealed Sonance audio to create an evolving coastal atmosphere.
The experience placed attention on something easily overlooked when designing from samples and still images: a room changes throughout the day. Timber, textiles and colour respond differently to bright daylight, warm afternoon light and a low evening glow.
For residential and hospitality interiors, this has practical implications. Lighting deserves a place in the earliest design conversations, when layouts, materials and the intended atmosphere are still taking shape.
Furniture with Character and Purpose
Furniture launches brought together historical references, sculptural forms and contemporary manufacturing.
Philippe Hurel presented a selection of furniture celebrating the French maison’s cabinetmaking heritage and contemporary design. As part of the French Living in Motion showcase, the brand brought together refined materials, carefully considered details and bespoke craftsmanship.
Ligne Roset presented the return of Michel Ducaroy’s Marsala seating, reimagined with a stained beech plywood shell. The collection demonstrated the continuing relevance of distinctive furniture designs when their construction is thoughtfully reconsidered.
The French brand also presented Oasi, a low table by Lorenzo Remedi in hammered red lacquered glass. Its reflective surface and strong colour give it the potential to become a focal point within a quieter scheme.
London-based Sterox Studio introduced Pyrus, an executive desk developed exclusively for Decorex 2026. A seamless Corian worktop was paired with curved Swiss pear veneer panels and leather-lined drawers, bringing contrasting materials into a carefully resolved form.
Designed, prototyped and made in-house, Pyrus also highlighted the value of close coordination between creative development and production. In bespoke furniture, that connection can be decisive in achieving both visual coherence and everyday functionality.
Traditional Craftsmanship in Contemporary Interiors
Decorex continues to provide a valuable platform for specialist makers, giving visitors opportunities to understand the processes behind finished pieces.
At Marchmont Workshop, traditional rush work found new expression in furniture, including the studio’s Rush Table. A floor-to-ceiling installation of river rush placed the material itself at the centre of the presentation.
Cornwall-based Alchemy Tiles, founded by artist-maker Mel Chambers, explored further possibilities for handcrafted ceramics. Its new modular table centrepieces and ceramic wall art extended a practice rooted in a historic encaustic inlay technique, with every tile carved by hand.
Such work offers designers a way to introduce a particular maker’s skill and perspective into a project. A commissioned surface or individually crafted object carries a sense of authorship that can help a space develop its own identity.
The show’s Making Spaces programme reinforced this connection through live demonstrations and workshops, bringing the knowledge behind specialist crafts into the wider design conversation.
Rugs as a Starting Point for Interior Design
Artistic collaborations gave rug design a strong presence at Decorex 2026.
Riviere’s collections with Olga Ashby and Angel O’Donnell explored the creative process through several organic form designs. Drift reimagines the organic beauty of natural stone. Canvas referenced the beginning of a project, Impasto drew on expressive brushwork, and Arboreal looked to the texture of tree bark.
Knots Rugs approached the relationship between art and textiles through its collaboration with artist Isabel Marina. Her paintings were translated into hand-knotted rugs, with colour and varied pile heights bringing another dimension to the compositions.
Northwest 35 explored light, reflection and shadow within its Abstractia collection. The exclusive Umbrae in Autumn Light colourway combined burgundy, earthy ochre and soft amber, while Fluted Light drew inspiration from light passing through textured glass.
These collections suggest an appealing way to approach a scheme: begin with the rug. Its composition can establish a palette, introduce movement and guide the selection of furniture, textiles and artwork around it.
Material Innovation Beneath the Surface
Alongside decorative experimentation, several launches drew attention to construction, provenance and the materials hidden within a product.
Naturalmat’s collaboration with Wallace Sewell introduced the Vale and Acres throws, made in the UK from fully traceable British wool. Its new Braunton Bed, inspired by 1970s Italian design, incorporated recycled denim and cotton offcuts within its upholstery filling.
Italian textile specialist Alessandro Bini presented fabric collections supported by its patented Coex technology, developed to bring flame-retardant properties to natural fabrics.
For designers, these developments make detailed specification increasingly valuable. Understanding composition, performance and maintenance helps connect the appeal of a product with its suitability for a particular space.
What Decorex 2026 Revealed About Luxury Interiors
The most compelling ideas at Decorex 2026 brought attention back to the experience of a room. A rug introduced the energy of a painting. Hand-worked materials offered texture and individuality. Carefully integrated lighting changed the atmosphere without dominating the interior.
For Visualista Edit, the enduring inspiration lies in that attention to detail. The spaces we return to tend to reveal something more each time: a subtle shift in colour, a surface that invites touch, or an object whose craftsmanship becomes clearer the longer we look.
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