Making interior design improvements has increased in recent years, with more than half of homeowners saying they decorated in 2022 and 2021. After spending nearly all of 2020 confined indoors, it makes sense that many people have shifted focus to making their home a place they can truly enjoy.
While everyone has their own style preferences, some design trends appear to be more popular by region. We used Google Trends data to find which interior design trend is most popular by city, state, and nationwide. Read on to learn about our findings, and check out our Methodology section below for more information on how we gathered and analyzed the data.
Our Findings
We found that industrial is the most popular interior design nationwide, and the style has exploded in popularity. In 2018, it was the top interior design trend in just five states, but it’s now the top-searched interior design style in 11 states. A few other key highlights include these:
- Maximalist is the second-most popular interior design style.
- Northeasterners are most interested in cottagecore, maximalist, and shabby chic styles.
- Midwesterners are far more interested in industrial design than other styles.
- French country is most popular in the South.
- Many city dwellers appear to tend toward cottagecore.
The Top-Searched Trends in Every State
Industrial style was the winning trend when comparing the most commonly searched design terms from each state. It won as the top-searched term in 11 states, predominantly in the Midwest along with Texas and Georgia.
As shown in the image above, interior design trends vary widely by region.
In the Northeast, there is a three-way tie in search interest for cottagecore, maximalist, and shabby chic interior design trends. Southerners are most interested in French country, with maximalist and shabby chic not far behind. And in the West, cottagecore reigns supreme, closely followed by rustic, and then a two-way tie for third between maximalist and midcentury modern.
The following graphic shows the top five most-searched design styles nationwide. For each, you’ll also see the states in which that design style was the most searched.
Don’t see your state above? Some states leaned into less-popular design styles, including eclectic, rustic, and bohemian. The list below shows which design style was the most-searched in each state.
The Top-Searched Trends by City
It appears that Americans who live in urban areas are trying to make the interior of their homes feel more like the countryside. Cottagecore overwhelmingly won as the most-searched interior design trend among the largest 50 metropolitan areas. Notable cities where cottagecore is the most popular interior design trend include these:
- Dallas-Fort Worth
- Seattle-Tacoma
- Baltimore
- Orlando-Daytona Beach
- Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto, California
- Pittsburgh
- Las Vegas
Following cottagecore, maximalism is highly searched among many of the biggest cities, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
Despite wanting an escape from the typical city aesthetics, people living in and near the city are less interested in the modern farmhouse and rustic designs—these were the least-searched terms throughout the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S.
In Conclusion
Design styles come and go in cycles, but industrial and midcentury modern designs seem to be more broadly adapted trends that stand the test of time. However, post-pandemic, many city dwellers seem to be shifting to cozier design styles. In the largest U.S. cities, residents are increasingly interested in cottagecore and maximalist designs, prioritizing a more-is-more philosophy: lots of knickknacks, covered walls, textures, and patterns.
Methodology
We used Google Trends data from June 2022 through May 2023 to find the top interior design trends in each state and across large cities.
Google Trends is a tool that allows users to compare search terms to discover how popular they are at a certain time and against other terms. Google presents data for each term on a scale of 0 to 100. We analyzed terms for 14 design styles to see what was most searched for in each region.
Those figures were then normalized by comparing them to the anchor word “interior design.” This word served as a control variable, preventing places and terms with the most search volume from ranking the highest. The final score we ranked on represents how popular design styles (industrial, maximalist, etc.) are relative to the control term (interior design). For each state, we found the style with the highest score.
Questions about our study? Please contact the Reviews’ Public Relations manager at [email protected].
Fair Use Policy
We encourage journalists and reporters to share our findings on interior design trends. If you choose to do so, please link back to our original story to give us proper credit for our research.