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Whether it was sustainability, references to nature or even a little healthy hit of maximalism, a sheer diversity of surface choices was the defining feature of this year’s Surface Design Show.

A three-year pause has proved the ideal chance for reinvention, and Stockholm Furniture Fair has seized that opportunity, with a slew of fresh initiatives and even a streamlined name.

Here we set out to discover if online colour palette generators are useful tools for colour professionals or simply a shortcut for Instagram content creators.

Made from a mineral mined as early as the 7th millennium BC, then employed as an indicator of wealth and status in Renaissance art, Ultramarine was once valued higher than gold.

Playing a pivotal role in the development of future tech, minerals may replace oil as a resource. Reports on vulnerabilities in global supply chains already exacerbated by conflict and climate change, and the crucial role of the consumer in rejecting mineral mining exploitation.

You’d think nobody would want to embrace a snake motif, what with the unavoidable association with original sin. But in spite, or maybe because of, their dark side, the allure of all things serpentine persists.

Over 600 companies from 26 countries came together to make the 39th edition of Cersaie, The International Exhibition of Ceramic Tile and Bathroom Furnishings, a statement on sustainability.

The latest edition of Dutch Design Week saw an abundance of introspective projects that express a complex and sometimes contradictory web of political, physical and spiritual viewpoints.

While the crowds were back to pre-pandemic numbers at this year’s contemporary art fair Frieze London, last year’s rejection of the brash and the shocking in favour of something gentler and more personal seems to have stuck. The dial remains firmly turned to commerciality, rather than shock and awe.