Soft Pop - Releasing in March 2026
A gently animated design direction where muted pastels, playful forms, and frosted transparencies create a spirited yet calming new aesthetic.
Soft Pop balances whimsical energy with grounded emotional serenity.
In this mood, muted pastels - frosted aquas, butter yellows, powder pinks, and soft lavenders - shape vibrant and nurturing environments.
Contemporary forms are softened through candied hues and tinted translucent materials, offering a lightness that is spirited yet introspective.
Every detail speaks to a future vision where joy and reassurance coexist, colour uplifts without overwhelming, and design feels fresh, soothing, and emotionally intelligent.
Soft Pop offers a vital emotional response in an increasingly complex and uncertain global landscape. It blends optimism, gentleness, and contemporary creativity into environments that nurture psychological well-being and resilient optimism.
Unlike louder colour movements, Soft Pop focuses on creating nurturing spaces that encourage optimism without overstimulation - an essential evolution for consumers seeking stability, imagination, and accessible creativity in uncertain times.
Our detailed research suggests that muted vibrancy, soft material tactility, and emotionally intelligent colour design will define a significant commercial opportunity in colour-based interiors, homewares, lifestyle brands, and hospitality through 2026/2027.
Each MC&Co Trend mood forecast includes over 150 pages of original, AI-enhanced imagery and commercially focused insight meticulously crafted through the MC&Co Trend Intelligence System.
The Soft Pop Forecast will be released in January 2026 as part of our evolving 2026/2027 trend series.
It will be available for individual purchase upon release. However, subscribers to our Annual Subscription Plan will automatically have the Soft Pop Forecast pre-booked, ensuring priority access and convenience.
Soft Pop is one of 24 distinct mood forecasts, each designed to sharpen creative direction, inspire purposeful design, and help brands connect emotionally with emerging consumer desires for uplifting, nurturing, and contemporary aesthetics.
Who Is The Soft Pop Forecast For?
Soft Pop is crafted for brands, businesses, and creatives who seek to infuse future collections and environments with gentle optimism, accessible creativity, and tactile sophistication.
- Furniture and homewares brands - Creating playful-yet-refined collections built around muted pastel palettes, soft translucencies, and contemporary forms.
- Interior designers and stylists - Designing nurturing spaces where joy, emotional calmness, and visual softness align.
- Product designers and material specialists - Shaping lighting, surfaces, and textiles that explore frosted transparencies, powdery finishes, and soft tactility.
- Lifestyle, hospitality, and wellness brands - Crafting environments where emotional uplift and imaginative lightness create memorable, reassuring experiences.
- Retail and experiential design specialists - Building immersive spaces that embrace emotional vibrancy while maintaining sophisticated visual discipline.
What's Inside The Soft Pop Forecast?
The Soft Pop Forecast offers over 150 pages of AI-enhanced, design-ready inspiration - crafted through the MC&Co Trend Intelligence System.
Inside, you'll find:
- Curated colour palettes of muted pastels, frosted hues, and softly diffused primaries.
- Material directions featuring tinted transparencies, frosted glass, velvety finishes, and playful tactile surfaces.
- Product form inspirations blending soft geometry, rounded edges, translucent layering, and whimsical proportioning.
- Spatial mood concepts across residential interiors, boutique hospitality, creative retail, wellness environments, and lifestyle brands.
- Strategic insights connecting emotional colour psychology, nurturing materiality, and emerging consumer preferences for 2026/2027 and beyond.
The Soft Pop Forecast will be released in January 2026.
The imagery shown here is a conceptual introduction; the full forecast will deliver a complete, design-ready vision of how muted energy, tactile beauty, and optimistic contemporary design will shape the future of interiors and product development.
Benefits for Designers and Businesses
Our trend forecasts transform fragmented research into clear, commercially actionable intelligence - giving design-led brands the clarity, creativity, and strategic edge needed to succeed in fast-moving markets.
- Reduce costly missteps by aligning creative direction with proven consumer behaviour and emerging demand - through insights validated against fundamental market drivers, not guesswork.
- Increase product success rates by designing with sharper market fit and more precise trend timing - using structured forecasts that map aesthetic shifts to commercial opportunities.
- Accelerate decision-making across product development, design, and marketing teams - by providing clear, ready-to-apply direction, eliminating the need for prolonged internal debate or fragmented research.
- Improve resource efficiency by freeing creative and buying teams to focus on execution, not speculation - through curated, pre-validated aesthetic and strategic direction.
- Visualise future opportunities through fresh, AI-enhanced imagery - showcasing commercially viable concepts, layouts, and products that are development-ready and market-relevant.
- Gain early access to exclusive, future-facing ideas - like stepping inside a curated design portfolio of the future, filled with new concepts, spaces, and products that inspire action, not imitation.
Key Features
Each MC&Co Trend Forecast offers 150+ pages of AI-enhanced, design-ready inspiration - built through the proprietary MC&Co Trend Intelligence System.
- Comprehensive Trend Intelligence - Rooted in the MC&Co Trend Intelligence System, providing data-backed insights into emotional drivers, aesthetic shifts, and commercial opportunities across global markets.
- AI-Generated Visuals - Every image is an original creation combining human trend expertise with AI innovation, delivering fresh, forward-thinking visualisations ready for development.
- Multi-Category Application - Designed for use across a wide range of sectors.
- Living Spaces - Furniture concepts, materials, colours, and spatial layouts.
- Dining & Kitchen - Product inspirations for kitchenware, dining settings, and tableware.
- Bedrooms & Bathrooms - Textiles, finishes, material palettes.
- Retail, Hospitality & Corporate Fit-outs - Design direction aligning creativity with commercial performance.
- Architecture - Structural, material, and form concepts for contemporary developments.
- Deep Psychological & Commercial Analysis - Each trend forecast connects aesthetic direction with consumer psychology and market dynamics - ensuring every decision is emotionally resonant and commercially grounded.
- Strategic, Design-Ready Insights - More than inspiration, each forecast is structured to drive product development, spatial planning, and marketing narratives with clarity, emotional impact, and commercial viability.
Understand our forecasts.
Everything you need to know about MC&Co Trend forecasts - and how they help design-led businesses stay ahead with clarity, confidence, and commercial intelligence.
How detailed is each forecast?
Each MC&Co Trend forecast includes over 150 pages of AI-enhanced, design-ready inspiration - covering colour forecasts, material palettes, furniture and product forms, spatial layouts, and commercial insights.
Every image and concept is curated to inspire, guide, and activate faster, more intelligent creative decision-making across multiple categories, including living spaces, kitchen and dining, bedrooms, bathrooms, retail, hospitality, and architecture.
What makes MC&Co Trend forecasts different from others?
Our forecasts combine over 30 years of expertise, the proprietary MC&Co Trend Intelligence System, and cutting-edge AI-enhanced visualisation.
Each forecast provides original, future-facing interior trend forecasts and colour forecasts designed for actionable use in design, product development, and brand strategy. It distils global shifts into precise, commercially relevant direction.
How do businesses use these forecasts?
Businesses apply our forecasts to:
- Product Development - Aligning materials, colours, forms, and finishes with future consumer and market trends.
- Retail & Merchandising Strategy - Creating compelling in-store experiences and collections that reflect evolving consumer aspirations.
- Interior Design & Fit-out Projects: We design residential, commercial, and hospitality spaces that are visually striking and commercially resonant.
How often are these forecasts updated?
MC&Co Trend releases 24 new forecasts annually, each capturing a distinct aesthetic movement, material evolution, or emotional shift.
Each forecast is crafted to offer fresh, future-ready insights designed to support businesses through a constantly evolving style landscape.
Is this forecast useful for businesses outside of interior design?
Absolutely.
While deeply rooted in home lifestyle and interiors, our insights apply to product manufacturing, retail, corporate environments, hospitality fit-outs, and architectural design.
Any business shaping physical environments or consumer-facing experiences will benefit from trend intelligence that bridges emotional connection and commercial application.
Our key features of the forecast.
Comprehensive Trend Intelligence
Rooted in the MC&Co Trend Intelligence System, each forecast is backed by rigorous emotional, aesthetic, and commercial analysis, giving teams clarity on why trends matter and how to use them confidently.
AI-Generated Visuals
Every image is created using a proprietary AI-enhanced system - delivering fresh, future-facing visuals that go beyond existing products to present new concepts, spaces, and styles ready for development.
Deep Psychological & Commercial Insight
More than just visuals - our forecasts connect emotional drivers to real market behaviours, helping teams understand what customers want next and how to design for meaning, mood, and demand.
Design-Ready Application
Each forecast is structured to inspire action - providing clear design directions, layout ideas, material palettes, and product forms ready to brief, pitch, or prototype across creative and commercial teams.
Multi-category application.
Designed for use across a wide range of sectors:
Living Spaces
Furniture concepts, materials, colours, and spatial layouts
Dining & Kitchen
Product inspirations for kitchenware, dining settings, and tableware
Bedrooms & Bathrooms
Textiles, finishes, material palettes
Retail, Hospitality & Corporate Fit-outs
Design direction aligning creativity with commercial performance
Architecture
Structural, material, and form concepts for contemporary developments
From vision to viability.
We don’t just inspire - we inform, validate, and commercialise your creative direction.
Expert-led forecasting
Backed by 30+ years of experience in interiors, retail and product strategy.
AI-enhanced visuals
Original, realistic imagery created using our proprietary AI + human-led system.
Commercial clarity
Insights built to guide product, design and buying decisions - not just inspire.
Global perspective
Forecasts shaped by international trends, cultural shifts and market relevance.
Real results. Real clients.
“MC&Co’s ability to translate complex global trends into actionable insights stood out, making the session not only informative but also practical for businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve.”
JACOB EGHOLM
CCO - UNIQUE FURNITURE - DENMARK
“MC&CO’s ability to fuse aspirational design with commercial relevance has elevated how we showcase our broad and deep collection of floor and wall coverings.”
DARREN TAYLOR
EXECUTIVE GENERAL MANAGER - MARKETING & ECOMMERCE, MARKETING - NATIONAL TILES
“MC&CO’s ability to fuse aspirational design with commercial relevance has elevated how we showcase our broad and deep collection of floor and wall coverings.”
PHILIPPE DELAISSE
CEO - ETHNICRAFT ASIA
“Their expertise has allowed us to present innovative and practical trend reports that have ‘wowed’ our customers and grown the business.”
SETH K. GROSS
CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER - AVANITY CORPORATION - USA
“We love working with you and you are a vital part of our product development process. We consider the work we do with you as a trade secret. We don’t want our competition to know about MC&Co Trend.”
ANONYMOUS
Retail / Wholesale + Interior Designers / Decorators
Tap into our powerful, proven Trend Intelligence System for accurate, and commercially viable trend forecasting.
Looking for more insights?
Access curated insights from our expert team - featuring trade fair highlights, evolving trend cycles, and clear visual direction to confidently guide your next big move forward.
