How Digitalisation is Impacting the Home Decor Industry
Have you ever thought about how technology and our online world affect our home offline space? Take a look at all the ways we see home décor becoming affected by the digital world.
The rise of online shopping
For better or worse, more and more consumers are purchasing home decor items through e-commerce sites and directly from brands online. The “better” team would point out that this provides more options and convenience for customers. Take wooden flooring, for instance. In the past, typically consumers mostly visited one wood flooring store, and more than likely it was the big one that everyone knows, regardless of quality or price, (because it’s the big one everyone knows) and leave with a date for your new floor to get put down. No room for choice, no room for creativity and making sure the floor fits your room’s style. With online shopping, the options have opened up for the customer. They can get better quality and different looks they might not find elsewhere.
Rise of influencer marketing
The rise of online shopping goes hand in hand with the rise of influencer marketing. There has been a large boom in the amount that people are looking for and buying items on social media. Not on websites, on social media. Social media platforms have given birth to home decor influencers who can launch trends and products digitally to large, devoted audiences. Their content greatly shapes today's styles. It’s something Instagram and TikTok have reacted to, taking steps to make the link between product, influencer and shop a lot smoother so that customers can discover, study, buy and review in as few steps as possible.
Access to global styles
As we mentioned, there are a lot more options in the digital world, and, as mentioned, they are getting more eyes on them thanks to social media. All these options can make giving a home a refresh to giving it a complete renovation. The internet has given consumers access to home decor styles and products from all over the world. Social media provides a space for diverse designers from non-Western backgrounds to share and promote their culture's aesthetics. This expands inspiration and available offerings beyond just local shops. The proof of this is the recent Japandi style at home, which is a combination of two vastly different countries (Scandinavia and Japan), brought together for a highly trendy home style over the past five years.
Increased visual content
It goes without saying that how your home looks is a big part of the decision-making in their home décor decisions – all year-around and at Christmas. Sure, there is the quality aspect, but how do you determine quality? Well, for those of us who aren’t in the industry, that’s usually by how it looks too. Brands and retailers should focus on creating visually compelling digital content like photos, videos, and even 3D renderings to showcase products online. This brings the in-store browsing experience to the web.
Taking it a step further, some retailers are leveraging augmented and virtual reality to let customers "try out" products virtually before buying or preview entire room designs digitally. Do you like the look of that sofa but don’t know if the statement colour will go well in your living room? Visualise it by digitally inserting it into your home with an app.
Smart home technology integration
Getting offline, kind of, for a moment, home decor brands are integrating smart home tech like lighting, thermostats, security, and music into their products and designing for connectivity. Voice control and apps are becoming commonplace, but the best part of these smart gadgets is that they’re all connected to the internet and that is the reason that your smart thermometer can tell you your nearest Chinese restaurant.
Not really, but it can regulate your home temperature automatically, your lights can turn on and off only when needed, your home security can be controlled no matter where you are and your favourite song can be played from, well, a majority of gadgets really.
Conclusion
All in all, digitisation comes for any and all industries – those born into digitisation and those who have to adapt. There will never be a moment in history when every industry is at the same level: it’s impossible for it to be. Some industries needn’t be, some industries have to be. Our homes are, though, an intersection of many industries, and the home decor industry hasn’t been untouched, nevermind how seemingly essential its analogue dimensions are. It’s allowed us to elevate certain aspects of our home and realise the potential of other aspects. We, like our home, like the home decor industry, move and adapt with the times.
