Designing for Identity, Not Trends in Your Home
Why homes that chase trends often feel temporary
Written by Janeca Racho, 54kibo Contributor
Expert insight by Marie Cloud, Interior Designer
Design trends promise clarity. They come with names, visuals, and often an assurance that if you follow closely enough, the result will feel current and complete. For many homeowners, trends offer relief from uncertainty. They answer the question of what to choose, even if they never address why.
Homes shaped primarily around trend cycles often feel finished quickly and provisional just as fast. What once felt exciting becomes dated or indistinct, and the space begins to feel tied to a moment rather than anchored to a person. Over time, that temporariness can register as a low-grade dissatisfaction that’s difficult to explain.
Designing for identity, not trends introduces a different frame. It shifts attention away from what’s current and toward what continues to feel accurate as life changes. Subtle as that distinction may be, it’s often the difference between a home that feels expressive and one that feels temporary.
Designing for Identity: Is Your Home a Reflection of Who You Are?
The distinction between designing for identity versus trends often becomes noticeable during periods when people sense that their home no longer feels fully aligned. The discomfort doesn’t always stem from the space itself, but from the realization that one’s surroundings are expressing something dated rather than something personal.
In these moments, trends can act as a shortcut by offering a ready-made response to an undefined feeling. The home may look refreshed, yet still feel disconnected. When the underlying tension is about alignment rather than appearance, external cues rarely resolve it.
This experience is explored more deeply in When Your Home No Longer Feels Like You, which reflects on how internal change can outpace physical spaces and why that gap often registers quietly at home.
Why Trends Struggle to Hold Meaning
Trends are designed to move. Their relevance depends on novelty, contrast, and replacement. What makes them compelling in the short term—freshness, visibility, social momentum—also limits their staying power.
Marie Cloud, interior designer and founder and creative director at Indigo Pruitt Design Studio shares that when homes are shaped primarily by trends, they often only capture a moment in time, not the people living there.
“They can be beautiful, but they tend to reflect the collective mood of the moment instead of the layered story of the people who live there,” she says. “When a home is shaped primarily by what’s current, it loses the small cues, heritage, lived experience, values, rituals that make a space feel rooted and personal.”
In other words, meaning tends to erode once the trend passes. The space may still function, but its emotional relevance fades, leaving behind a sense of having invested in something that no longer speaks clearly.
This tension often surfaces when people begin asking what their house says about them. The question isn’t prompted by aesthetics alone, but by the feeling that the space reflects awareness of trends more than the person living there. The home looks current, but not particularly personal.
Design Beyond Trends: Identity as a Lens
Designing for identity doesn’t mean rejecting influence or change. It means recognizing that trends can decorate a space, but they can’t define it. Identity introduces continuity, allowing a home to evolve without losing its center.
That distinction often becomes most visible when a space appears resolved on the surface but lacks a deeper sense of attachment, explains Cloud. “When a space feels ‘complete’ yet strangely temporary, it’s usually missing emotional authorship. The design decisions may be sound, but the narrative, the why behind the choices hasn’t been anchored to the person or family.”
A home can be visually cohesive and still feel disconnected. Another can remain largely unchanged and feel grounding. The difference isn’t polish or restraint, but whether the space reflects the life being lived now rather than the one it was once designed to support.
“Meaningful spaces are often built around identity, memory, and intention. Without that layer, a home can look resolved on the surface while still feeling noncommittal beneath it,” she adds.
For many people experiencing identity misalignment at home, this distinction brings a measure of clarity. Not because it offers immediate answers, but because it explains why previous changes never fully settled the feeling. Identity, when it becomes the lens, helps make sense of what trends alone could not.
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If this resonates, this piece explores the experience more deeply:
Janeca is a trained journalist and storyteller with a background in public relations, media, and corporate communications. She now writes freelance, drawn by the freedom to travel and explore her craft. When she’s not writing, she finds inspiration in design styles from around the world, curating boho-meets-coastal pieces for her beachside home.
