During Tile of Spain’s Coverings Connected press conference earlier this week, Ryan Fasan, Tile of Spain’s technical consultant and tile and stone expert, outlined five new macro trends poised to influence the tile market moving forward.
“When I’m looking at macro trends, I start looking at every other category possible that isn’t related to interiors or ceramics—movies, podcasts, books and vacation locales,” Fasan explained. “What we’re exposed to everyday starts building our preferences—the trends and things we’re connected with. That starts to tell us the overall macro view of what’s going to be relevant for ceramics.”
Fasan outlined the five trends as follows:
Maximalism evolution
Transition to abstract expressionism
“Maximalism is defined by being the antithesis of minimalism,” Fasan explained. “It’s true that we needed a palate cleanser because we had about a decade of minimalism that we were embracing up until last year. What I love about how it has evolved and how it translates to a more abstract expressionism style is that now all of the different things that we’re building into our spaces need to have some sort of story, a connection, something that resonates with the owners of the space and the people using it. I’m seeing that done so wonderfully today. Everything has this deep story. And it’s so easy to do in tile because tile has centuries of history to draw upon.”
Aftermath mash-up
A pattern emerges
“There were a lot of people positing that we were going to have a complete literal rehash of the roaring ’20s. And while it’s true there is a lot of 1920s inspiration coming into design in a very effective way, I’m also seeing a revival of the 1950s in abstract expressionism, mid-century modern pieces as well as a lot in terms of patterns and colorways,” Fasan explained. “These two decades are very much characterized by the crises that came before them. Despite us being in the middle of our own crisis, I think the 2020s are also characterized by a bunch of crises that we’ve weather getting up to here. It’s really interesting when you see these two decades of design language mashed together because they are more complementary than you would expect at first glance.”
Chalk it up to progress
Hyper-Matt & Flat Colors
“There’s this huge appreciation growing for craftsman pieces—furniture, cabinetry, frames for artwork,” Fasan said, adding: “Anything done decades ago when people took the time to do it by hand and do it properly. I’m seeing hyper-matte and flat come into these tile programs in an extremely effective way this year—from marbles to solid colors and terracotta. The most important thing is, it’s hyper-matte. It’s this flat tone, and the only way to get there is to get to a very narrow band of color and just spread the variation in saturation. This flat tone also lets us highlight and showcase the changes with finish from hyper-matte to super-gloss where we can take digitally applied veins and leverage new technology to really showcase it in an extreme way that makes a huge impact.”
Luxury is personal
The dissonant glamour perspective
“If something is going to be luxury, it has to be deeply personal,” Fasan explained. “We’re taking these deeply impactful stories, these iconic stones that are aggressive and haven’t had a place to tell their story because our design language was so minimalistic, and we are photographing and reproducing them digitally to create this deeply personal experience of luxury. It doesn’t have to be over the top; it can be extremely refined.”
Terra firma
Reconnection with the Earth
“The situation we find ourselves in today is telling us that we are deeply connected in a symbiotic relationship to our world,” Fasan stated. “The honoring of natural, noble materials is something that is very strong in our design language today. There’s nothing more natural than baked earth, which is ceramics. I’m seeing so many programs that aren’t ceramics being a chameleon, they aren’t trying to be something else. They are taking a modern representation of centuries of practice and building new programs that are strictly ceramics. It has that connection to our world that we depend on, and it truly tells a deep and impactful story.”