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The Autumn 2026 Launches Worth Knowing: A Designer's Edit of London Design Festival, Focus/26 and Decorex

Writer: Gemma Budworth
Gemma Budworth
Sep 17
7 min read

September is when the British interiors year actually begins.


The paint houses launch their new colours. The fabric and wallpaper brands unveil the collections they have been working on since January. London Design Festival takes over the city for nine days, Focus/26 fills the Design Centre at Chelsea Harbour, and the trade starts placing the orders that will become next spring's finished rooms.


People at Decorex

Most of this happens behind a trade badge, and most of it is written up for other designers rather than for the people who will actually live with the results. Which is a shame, because if you are planning a project this winter, what launched this month is what you will be choosing from.


So this is my edit. Not a list of everything, which would run to hundreds of pages, but the handful of launches and the five wider themes that I think will genuinely shape British homes over the next eighteen months, and what they mean if your house is a Victorian terrace in Basingstoke rather than a showroom in Chelsea.


The season, in four dates

8th September: Dulux names Soulful Sage its Colour of the Year 2027. A soft, silvery grey-green, chosen because people want their homes to feel lighter and calmer. I have written about it in detail separately; the short version is that it is a good colour that needs warm company.


12th to 20th September: London Design Festival. The city-wide programme this year leaned hard into craft, material innovation and emerging makers. The V&A's Awakenings show put artificial intelligence alongside traditional technique, Material Matters in Shoreditch brought together more than 50 exhibitors working with reclaimed and newly developed materials, and there were memorable launches from Faye Toogood, Porta Romana, SCP and Made x Barbican.


14th September: Little Greene adds 26 new colours. Additions to both the Colours of England and Colour Scales ranges, including shades named Haye White, Parlour, Perpetual Blue, Floss and Ashes of Marigold. Little Greene's colour charts are among the most historically literate in Britain, and a launch of this size is a significant moment for anyone specifying paint this winter.


14th to 18th September: Focus/26 at Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour. More than 650 brands across 140-plus showrooms, with new arrivals from Corston, Jim Thompson and The Vale London, and a full programme of talks. This is where the trade goes to see fabric, wallpaper, lighting and hardware in one place, and it is where most of the specific launches below were on show.


And looming on the horizon, 11th to 14th October: Decorex at Olympia, which I come on to at the end.


Five themes from this autumn's launches


1. Craft you can see from across the room

The strongest thread running through both LDF and Focus/26 was visible, unapologetic handwork. Zimmer + Rohde showed Celestia, a trim embroidered with moons and stars, alongside silks with hand-painted motifs and koi embroidery. Faye Toogood's Johnny collection is a family of sculptural paper lights on wrought-iron tripod bases that look like ritual objects. At Material Matters, exhibitors showed tiles grown by bacteria, 3D-printed ceramics and oak salvaged from brutalist buildings.


This is the found-luxury shift I have been writing about all year, now fully priced into the trade. Quiet luxury hid the hand. This season celebrates it, and the practical consequence is that a single embroidered cushion, a hand-painted lampshade or a piece of studio ceramics now carries a room in a way a matching set never could.


2. Hardware as jewellery

Armac Martin's two new collections were, for me, the most quietly influential launch of the month. Sketch is a range of soft, fluid handles in a bronzed finish by industrial designer Jake Soloman. Whimsical is exactly what it sounds like: ballet-slipper handles, tutu pulls, speckled citrus-peel knobs and honeycomb designs, with door handles, sockets and switches to follow.


Hardware is the cheapest way to make a kitchen or a piece of joinery look like it was designed rather than bought. Houzz's 2026 UK Kitchen Trends Study found bar pulls on 35 per cent of new kitchens and brushed nickel the most popular finish. Bronzed, sculptural and slightly playful is where the interesting end of the market has moved, and it will filter down.


3. Marble with more drama

The stone story of the season was Calacatta Monet, shown on tables by Collection Seven and Collection Noir. It has the dramatic veining of the better-known Calacatta Viola but in green rather than purple, and it is, for now, the lesser-known alternative. Expect it to appear on a great many bathroom vanities and kitchen islands over the next two years.

The broader point is that stone has become a decorative choice rather than a neutral one. Warm-veined marbles, travertine and honed limestone are replacing grey quartz as the surfaces people want to touch.


4. Textured glass and sculptural light

Arteriors brought a whole family of textured glass sconces, chandeliers and pendants to Chelsea Harbour, and glass that ripples, bubbles or is cast with visible imperfection was everywhere else too. It suits the wider move away from polished surfaces, and it does something useful in a period home: it softens LED light, which is the single biggest reason so many renovated rooms feel harsh.


5. The past made present

Made x Barbican launched 23 pieces that translate the concrete geometry and original 1960s interiors of the Barbican into furniture, lighting and textiles. At Ham House, Kingston University graduates reinterpreted marquetry, Coade stone and lacquer in Past Made Present. Porta Romana's Traces collection reworked classic silhouettes through shifts of scale and material. Vispring marked its 125th anniversary with Tom Dixon's Rainbow bed, a sculptural headboard in rust-coloured silk.


None of these are reproductions. They are contemporary pieces that know their history, and that is precisely the balance Modern English Country asks for: heritage bones, present-day confidence.


The launches at a glance

Launch

Brand

What it is

Who it suits

Soulful Sage

Dulux

Colour of the Year 2027, a silvery grey-green

Anyone repainting a south-facing room or a kitchen with warm timber

26 new colours

Little Greene

Additions to Colours of England and Colour Scales

Period homes wanting historically grounded colour

Sketch and Whimsical

Armac Martin

Bronzed fluid handles; playful tutu and citrus-peel pulls

Kitchens and bespoke joinery that need a lift without a refit

Celestia

Zimmer + Rohde

Embroidered moon-and-star trim, hand-painted silks

A hero cushion, blind or headboard in a bedroom

Johnny collection

Faye Toogood

Sculptural paper lights on wrought-iron tripods

A sitting room that needs one statement light, not five

Calacatta Monet tables

Collection Seven / Collection Noir

Green-veined marble, the alternative to Calacatta Viola

Bathrooms and islands wanting drama without purple

Textured glass lighting

Arteriors

Sconces, chandeliers and pendants in rippled glass

Period rooms where LED light feels harsh

Made x Barbican

Made

23 pieces referencing 1960s Barbican interiors

Mid-century or modernist flats and extensions

Traces

Porta Romana

Classic silhouettes reworked in scale and material, plus outdoor pieces

Country houses and gardens

Rainbow bed

Vispring x Tom Dixon

125th-anniversary bed with a rust silk sculptural headboard

A principal bedroom with the budget for one extraordinary piece


How to bring a trade show home without buying the show

Showrooms are designed to overwhelm you, and they are very good at it. The rooms are lit like theatre sets, every surface is new, and nothing has to survive a dog, a toddler or a Tuesday. Here is how I translate what I see in September into schemes that work in real houses.


Choose one hero, then stop. Every principle I have ever written about found luxury and Modern English Country comes back to this. A Toogood light or an embroidered Zimmer + Rohde blind is a hero. Two heroes in one room argue. Pick the piece that will make you smile in twenty years and build the rest of the room quietly around it.


Buy the hardware, not the kitchen. If your cabinets are sound, new handles, a new tap and a repaint in a considered colour will transform a kitchen for a fraction of the cost of a refit. This is the most underused move in British homes.


Use the trends as a materials list, not a shopping list. What the shows tell you is that bronze, textured glass, dramatic stone, embroidered textiles and dark timber are where the language is going. You do not need the exact products. A reclaimed marble washstand from a salvage yard speaks the same language as a Calacatta Monet table.


Mix decades on purpose. The best rooms this season paired new launches with old pieces: Christopher Farr's new rugs shown with archival textiles, Max Radford's gallery pairing contemporary furniture with vintage. A new sofa next to a Georgian chest looks collected. Everything from the same catalogue looks like a catalogue.


Order samples before you order anything. The paint launches in particular deserve a large sample board and a full day of watching the light move across it. September's enthusiasm is October's regret if you skip this step.


What comes next: Decorex in October

Decorex returns to Olympia from 11 to 14 October with more than 280 luxury interior brands, designers and artisans. Rug specialists are out in force this year, including Lilla Rugs, Knots Rugs, Coban Rugs and Riviere, alongside Elements London, The Natural Mat Company and The Unnatural Flooring Company. The Making Spaces programme, now in its fifth year, gives 14 contemporary artisans a live platform to show how bespoke pieces are actually made, and the talks programme covers sustainability, project delivery and craft.


If September was about colour, fabric and hardware, October is where the floors, the beds and the bespoke joinery get decided. Expect the craft theme to intensify, and expect rugs in particular to get more attention than they have had in years, which is overdue. A good rug is the most transformative single purchase most people never make.


I'll write up the pieces worth knowing about after the show.


Planning a project this winter?

The autumn launches set the palette for the next two years of British homes: bronze and textured glass, dramatic stone, visible craft, historically literate colour and furniture that knows its past. None of it requires a showroom budget. It requires editing, which is the part I do.


If you are planning a renovation or a redecoration in Hampshire, Berkshire or Surrey and would like help turning this season's launches into a room that suits your house and your life, I would love to hear from you. And if you want the fuller picture on where 2026 is heading, I have written a 26-page guide covering the warm earthy palette, the dining room's return and the looks I am gently steering clients away from. You can find out more here.


Gemma Budworth is the founder of Gemma Budworth Interiors, a British interior design studio specialising in modern heritage homes, based in Sherborne St John near Basingstoke, Hampshire.


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