How to refresh your home with Hygge, the most loved lifestyle concept

If you’re looking to add more positivity and fulfilment in your life and the first place you turn to tackle this is your home, then popular lifestyle concepts may be a good place for you to start. But when it comes to lifestyle concepts, it’s fair to say that there’s a few to choose from.

Well, we took it upon ourselves to research and find out what the most talked-about lifestyle concepts currently are. While Feng Shui came out on top, we wanted to dive in deeper to find out which style is worth welcoming into your home. To do this, we looked at the concepts with the most positive books reviews, highest Youtube ratings and most positive sentiment on Instagram.

Keep reading to discover our findings and learn which style may suit your home and personal taste best!

With 6,840,572 mentions on the Hygge Instagram hashtag and 159,120 likes on the first 500 posts on the Hygge hashtag, this concept is certainly much-loved and here to stay!

Lagom is the second most rated lifestyle concept which you can expect to see more of on your social media feeds this year. With 226,462 mentions on the Lagom Instagram hashtag, this trend is definitely one to watch out for. Plus, with a huge 276,616 likes on the first 500 pictures on the Lagom hashtag, this is a great design trend to jump on board with!

The Top 3 Most Rated Concepts Explained

With these design trends rapidly increasing in popularity, you may be wondering what they mean exactly, where they’ve come from and what you can do to incorporate them into your home, and we’re here to help and answer all your burning questions.

What is Hygge?

Hygge (pronounced hue-guh, you’re welcome) is a Danish word that has a general meaning of cosiness and contentment. It’s all about finding joy and happiness in the little things and is a hugely popular lifestyle choice in Denmark as it keeps people feeling cheerful during the long, dark winter months. If you've ever just lounged in the living room watching your favourite show on Netflix under a thick, cosy blanket with a mug of hot chocolate in hand and a candle lit, then you’ve experienced Hygge.

This popular lifestyle caught the attention of many other countries and now hundreds of thousands of people want to live the Hygge life and try to make their interiors as cosy as possible. Here are some of the things you can do to achieve this look according to our Head of Creative, Kelly Collins:

“Boucle made its debut at the end of last year and is the perfect fabric for this trend. Its bobbled surface and messy texture is extremely comfortable.

Look to stick to more neutral tones, especially in your living and bedrooms. Try adding warm neutrals to create a calm and soothing environment.”

What is Lagom?

Lagom is a Swedish term which means not too little and not too much. It’s about living a balanced life with everything in moderation in order to live a happy and content life. When translated to the home, this typically includes using sustainable materials for furniture, ensuring each item is functional, upcycling and being generally more eco-conscious.

If this sounds like something you’d like to embark on and adapt your home to, here are some of our top suggestions to help you get started:

“Similar to Hygge, Lagom is about creature comforts but unlike that trend it's about not overdoing it and being happy and content with the items you have:

• Keep your interiors relatively minimal
• Focus on statement pieces such as a structured piece of furniture and pairing it with softer touches to keep the comfy aspect
• Don’t be rigid when styling a lagom inspired room. Be minimal, but not perfect
• Move away from styling rooms to look symmetrical and find a minimalist messiness.”

What is Ikigai?

Ikigai is a popular Japanese lifestyle which combines two words, ‘iki’, which means life and ‘gai’, which means value, which, when put together can be loosely translated as ‘reason for being’.

When it comes to designing your home in an Ikigai style, you’ll want to focus on higher-quality, beautiful and functional pieces. You’ll also want to inject a lot of personality into the room as Ikigai is all about encouraging and reminding you of your passions and giving you a reason to get up in the mornings.

Here are some of our expert ideas on how you can make your home more suited to the Ikigai style:

“This trend is particularly relevant as many of us are now working from home. Ikigai is all about having a clear direction and purpose, so creating a space that mirrors these ideologies is key.

There’s two ways you can achieve this, try ensuring your home office is an organised space. It may be that you add a bookcase or storage in order to bring more structure and tidiness.

Another way is to ensure your office is a place full of photos, achievements and positive memories in this space. Maybe finally frame that award you received!”

Which Concepts Are On The Rise?

Of course, design trends are always shifting and the most recent concepts that are currently rising in popularity are Coorie (Còsagach) and Fika.

What is Coorie/Còsagach?

Coorie, or Còsagach, is a concept that’s very similar to Hygge but was derived in Scotland. Còsagach is an old Scottish word that describes the feeling of being cosy, snug or sheltered. As Scotland is renowned to be a warm, welcoming and comforting place, many have taken it upon themselves to live like Scottish highlanders, away from their fast-paced, technology-fuelled lives and focus more on their wellbeing. A big comfortable armchair, a stone fireplace and a book are just what’s needed for a Còsagach lifestyle.

Here’s what you need to stay ahead of the trends and bring the cosiness of Cosagasch into your home:

“We are seeing people care more about manufacturing, British manufacturing in particular, in order to celebrate industry and skills involved in building furniture.

We are also seeing upholstery that lacks structure in terms of shape, anything goes - curved edges, hard edges, clean lines, oversized arm and back cushions, rounded edges etc. Anything that emphasises cosiness and comfort. The geometric prints are still unstructured, like we saw last year, but the shapes are strong and the patterns are organic, which is where the Scottish/ English patterns come in. You’ll find yourself drawn to rich colours like forest green and claret red when creating a Coorie space.”

What is Fika?

Fika is a big part of many Swede’s daily routines. It involves having a coffee and a delicious Sweedish pastry with friends, family or co-workers in the morning and the afternoon. While it sounds like something we all do anyway, the people of Sweden take this time much more seriously. For us, a coffee break is something we use to get through the day, for them, it’s a chance to pause, appreciate the best things in life and slow down. To really incorporate Fika into your daily life you’ll need to take time out of your busy schedule to savour the moment and truly enjoy what life has to offer.

After 2020, designers will be thinking differently when planning homes and particularly work spaces. The importance of mental wellbeing will be one of the key things in the front of their minds, so adding more private spaces will be considered.

From a design perspective, Fika is a relaxing time so you’ll want to include comfortable, calm and relaxing pieces of furniture to help you take a break. Here are a couple of things you can include in your decor to achieve a Fika way of life:

• “It’s all about the round edges
• Look for furniture with flange detailing, but no straight edges to be seen”

There are plenty of lifestyle concepts available to help you live a more enjoyable, relaxed and peaceful life. Whether you choose to live a cosy, Hygge lifestyle or a more vibrant Ikigai style, they can all be translated to your home for a place of solace.

If you’re considering changing up your living room style to suit these concepts, take a look at our Model 01, Model 02 and Model 03 modern and contemporary sofa ranges to get started!

Methodology: The scorecard for the most rated lifestyle concept is based on data retrieved from Instagram, Amazon books and Youtube videos. We analysed the top 1,000 results for each concept’s hashtag (e.g. #hygge) and reviewed likes, and comments with a heart emoji, we also sourced the five of the most popular books related to the concept and pulled their ratings to achieve an average rating score - we mirrored this for YouTube videos, finding the highest viewed then pulling an average for the amount of ‘thumbs up’. This research was carried out from December 2020 - January 2021.