People still want what they wanted. The way they choose it has changed. I’ve spent thirty years reading the home market, and the customer has never been harder to read than right now. Spending continues. But the signals that used to tell us a purchase was coming — the enquiry, the return visit, the predictable trade-up — have weakened, all at once. Brands that could once anticipate their customer are now guessing, and most of them know it.

The pressures shaping 2027–2028 are not temporary shocks; they have become the operating environment. Across economics, geopolitics, environment, emotion and trust, the evidence is consistent and none of it reverses. The result: confidence is now the scarcest input in a purchase decision, and it is changing how people buy for their homes. MC&Co's Annual Report, The Architecture of Control, maps that shift and what to build for it.

For thirty years we've been doing this work privately — observing markets, qualifying behaviour, and translating macro pressure into commercial direction. Most of it delivered inside studios, boardrooms and showroom backrooms, for clients who already trusted the discipline. None of it was for a shelf. 

Trend forecasting is not disappearing.
It is expanding at an unprecedented rate. More reports. More imagery. More predictions. Entire directions can now be generated in minutes. What once required experience, research and interpretation can now be produced instantly, often at little to no cost. I have spent over three decades working in this industry. I have never seen more trend content available, or more ways to generate it.

Molteni&C's new Ningbo Dibao tower places a Richard Rogers building around a Vincent Van Duysen interior, with Gio Ponti pieces reinforcing the direction. Together they confirm what we have been forecasting across the premium category: colour is returning, and it is returning through disciplined geometry. This is what that shift looks like in built form, and what it means for the next two buying cycles.

The design industry now has unprecedented access to inspiration. Trade fairs provide hundreds of references within days, social platforms showcase new interiors, products and materials constantly, and AI can generate fully resolved spaces in seconds. Access has expanded significantly, yet outcomes have not improved at the same pace. Many businesses still struggle to build product assortments that feel resolved, commercially relevant and clearly differentiated. The issue is not a lack of ideas. It sits in what happens after those ideas are gathered.