Quiet Luxury in Interiors: Restraint as a Design Principle

«Quiet Luxury» is, first of all, a term noted by language observation, not an established technical term. The Cambridge Dictionary's language-observation blog documented the phrase on 5 June 2023 as a newly noted word combination, describing it there as a fashion trend for clothing of very high quality, well cut and in neutral colours; it does not have its own main dictionary entry. The same blog post also recorded a related term, «blandstanding», for wearing simple, practical but very expensive clothing — a sign that «Quiet Luxury» was part of a broader language movement around deliberately understated luxury, not an isolated, one-off phenomenon.

How quickly the term spread in 2023 is shown by a Google Trends analysis commissioned by a British fashion brand, cited in the lifestyle magazine Robb Report: searches for «quiet luxury» are reported to have risen by 373 percent within a month in April 2023, and searches for «stealth wealth» by 334 percent. For context: this is a commercial brand analysis based on search volume over a short period, not a scientific survey, and it concerns fashion, not interiors. The same article attributed the rise to a general move away from conspicuous logos towards cut, design and material quality. In the design and interiors press, the term is documented from summer 2023 at the latest: the British interiors magazine Livingetc used it for the home in August 2023, and in December 2023 the media portal of the Milan furniture fair Salone del Mobile described it as a trend moving from fashion into the design industry, with the shorthand «quality, sobriety, no ostentation». We were unable to establish a confirmed first use of the term in an interiors context.

For context, it matters that all the sources named so far are editorial observations or commercial brand analyses, not scientific studies. Neither the Cambridge language blog nor the cited Google Trends analysis is equivalent to an official main dictionary entry or an academic study — both merely document that a term appears, or is searched for, not how widespread the underlying design practice actually is, or what effect can be attributed to it.

For the home, New York interior designer Artem Kropovinsky, quoted in the British magazine Livingetc (August 2023), describes «Quiet Luxury» as an elegance that whispers rather than shouts — a multitude of details working together harmoniously without overwhelming the senses. What matters in this formulation is the emphasis on interplay: it is not a single striking element that takes centre stage, but the way many small, carefully chosen details interlock. In the same feature, New York architect Andrew Kotchen frames the style in the home as not performative, but rather focused on comfort, ease and quality, with an emphasis on functionality, craftsmanship, beauty and ease.

The German-language advice portal Immowelt frames «Quiet Luxury» in interior design similarly in a recent article (2026): as high-quality restraint with simple yet refined furniture pieces, natural materials such as wood and marble, and neutral colour schemes. Furniture and decorative elements, in the portal's own wording, are not meant to demand attention but to win people over through fine details and durability. Across all three sources, a common thread emerges: the yardstick lies less in the origin of a single piece of furniture than in how carefully material, craftsmanship and colour choice are coordinated within the overall picture.

Several of the professionals cited place material choice at the centre. Interior designer Lisa Staton describes, to Livingetc (August 2023), a mix of old and new elements and a broad range of textures; velvet, brass, stone and leather count, in her view, as inviting materials that — in her own assessment — age particularly gracefully over time. This emphasis on durability stands in contrast to short-lived, disposable decor items: a material allowed to show signs of wear, rather than hide them, counts on this reading as higher quality, not as worn out.

According to Salone Milano (December 2023), architect Vincent Van Duysen attaches great importance to the choice of natural and organic materials; in his own words, they give him a sense of calm and completeness, and he attributes a significant part of the emotion in his work to tactile aspects and the interplay of textures. He himself describes his design approach as a kind of visual silence, which, in his own conception, is meant to foster comfort and create spaces in which people can switch off. As must be noted here, these are the subjective design intentions of a single architect regarding his own work — not proven effects on well-being or health, and not a claim that could be generalised. Anyone reading these assessments should therefore understand them as the aesthetic judgements of experienced designers, not as a tested property of a material.

The trade press explicitly distinguishes «Quiet Luxury» from minimalism — a confusion that seems natural at first glance, since both styles avoid loud statements. According to Salone Milano (December 2023), author Wim Pawels, who published a 2023 illustrated book featuring 18 international interiors on the theme, draws a clear line between the two approaches: minimalism stands for a functional, pared-back aesthetic, while «Quiet Luxury» describes spaces that remain lavish and comfortable — the difference lies in the handling of materials, colours, details and atmosphere, not in the quantity of furniture and objects present.

According to the same source, the Milan design studio Studiopepe puts it in similar terms: «Quiet Luxury» is not just the timeless, ageless elegance of spaces but, above all, a way of life and a «rediscovery of essential, well-made things». On this reading, it is less about a fixed shopping list of particular materials than about an attitude towards one's own home: deliberately few but carefully chosen, durable pieces, rather than a quick turnover of decor.

For all the depth of description from the professionals cited, it should be noted: «Quiet Luxury» is a press- and market-driven trend term, not a scientific term and not a certification mark. We are not aware of any psychological or scientific study that examines «Quiet Luxury» as an interior style or measures its effect on well-being — all the assessments gathered here come from individual architects, design studios and editorial outlets, not from a representative or controlled study. Nor do the search data mentioned at the outset say anything about how many homes are actually decorated in this sense — they measure only how often a term was searched for online. Anyone who wants to be guided by this is therefore best off understanding the term as a steer towards a design approach — high-quality, durable materials, a restrained visual language, neutral colours — and not as a tested standard or a category with fixed criteria.

For anyone who wants to put this design approach into practice at home: at our showroom you will find beds and living-room furniture with a restrained visual language and various material finishes to compare. This is no substitute for any of the assessments by individual professionals described above — in the end, what decides is the personal impression on the spot, not a trend term.