How to Create 'Lore' in Your Home Through Hyper-Personal Decor

a home bar with a sofa that has decorative motifs on — Californian design studio J2 Interiors upholstered this sofa using a custom-designed fabric by Bode featuring books, food, and nature scenes.

(Image credit: Sam Frost. Design: J2 Interiors. Styling: Lisa Rowe)

I'll be honest — when I first put the trend for interior objects customized to a deeply personal level into words in our last Style Pulse report, I called it the art of 'story telling'. However, on reflection, this didn't feel personal enough. Storytelling is, at best, something someone else does, something that loses its meaning along the way like a whispered folktale that takes a different form each time it's repeated; at worst, it feels a little bit 'marketing department'.

So, for this season's report, I'm rebranding. This isn't storytelling, this is 'lore building'. These designs we're seeing take many forms — from embroidered couches and customized Delft tiles to totally personal combinations of materials, colors, and motifs that don't make sense to anyone else but you. In each of them, there's a personal history, an in-joke, something that, generally, is going to require an explanation to anyone else but the people who really know you.

Why, you might wonder, has this interior design trend come about? It started with us drawing on our decor, from joinery to wallpaper to lampshades and everything in between, and has graduated to attempts to incorporate personalization wherever we can, be it embroidery, painted trims, or even painted sofas (the first time we talked about it, in fact, was in regards to Kendall Jenner's 'drawn-on' sofa).

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a white room with a coffee table tiled with different plant and animal motifs — This coffee table gets the tile treatment in a project by Brazilian studio Figo Interiores. "It was designed by our studio and finished with a curated selection of tiles by the artist Calu Fontes, who hand-paints each piece individually," says founder Monica Fidelix.

But, its reason is not just aesthetic. I’m wondering: are we asking our interiors to be a bit more engaging? Is it a way to stop ourselves from scrolling on our phones and to enjoy our homes by having stuff that we can look at and appreciate? It’s bringing the detail into life, so there’s always something to notice, always something to look at on a really small scale that makes it richer and more storied.

It's also about the strive for originality. I was struck by a comment made by Simon Porte Jacquemus, founder of fashion brand Jacquemus, in a video I watched recently, where the designer explained he didn't let his creative team pull images from the internet, only from hard copy reference books. "Everyone gets served the same images through the algorithm," he explained.

a multi-patterned tile sink in a bathroom with patterned wallpaper — "The mix and match design keeps the surface feeling alive and expressive, almost like a small artwork rather than a utility," says Prospect Refuge Studio's Victoria, who worked with ceramicist Kristen Falkirk to create one-of-a-kind tiles for the powder room.

"People want homes that feel individual again," agrees Victoria Sass, founder of design studio Prospect Refuge in Minneapolis. "After years of mass-produced sameness, anything with the hand of the maker, or the homeowner, feels meaningful. These small custom gestures let people add personality and story without a major renovation. We are seeing this everywhere: hand-painted lampshades, embroidered upholstery, custom hardware, and even bespoke light pulls. They are small moves, but they shift the tone of a room and make a space feel lived in and truly their own."

It's almost anti-trend in nature. Where trends more widely suggest an appeal to a mass, hyper-personalization is about the individual, a sense of permanence, and personal history. However, it also, as these things do, translates into a specific aesthetic, which is what cements it as a trend itself. The designs curated on this page have a charming and eclectic randomness to them, often feeling like Victorian curiosities, and that's the aesthetic with real resonance right now.

a woman standing next to embroidered footstools in an old room with peeling wallpaper — It's also a trend that's a disavowal of mass production, and celebration of craft. Often, the ways this hyper-personalization is achieved is through human touch — including the embroidery of Kara Douwma of Uncommon Ancestors, pictured.

Yet, the idea lends itself to a less trend-led way of curating a home. It prioritizes collecting meaningful objects that preserve your stories, even if in a less obvious way, and building a home that has more of a long-term identity. It's a recurring theme in interior design trends at present, in everything from the call of a more traditional aesthetic and choosing antiques, through to the color trends defining the year — more emotional, human attachment, and a resistance to fast, throwaway design moments.

Hugh is Livingetc.com’s editor. With 8 years in the interiors industry under his belt, he has the nose for what people want to know about re-decorating their homes. He prides himself as an expert trend forecaster, visiting design fairs, showrooms and keeping an eye out for emerging designers to hone his eye. He joined Livingetc back in 2022 as a content editor, as a long-time reader of the print magazine, before becoming its online editor. Hugh has previously spent time as an editor for a kitchen and bathroom magazine, and has written for “hands-on” home brands such as Homebuilding & Renovating and Grand Designs magazine, so his knowledge of what it takes to create a home goes beyond the surface, too. Though not a trained interior designer, Hugh has cut his design teeth by managing several major interior design projects to date, each for private clients. He's also a keen DIYer — he's done everything from laying his own patio and building an integrated cooker hood from scratch, to undertaking plenty of creative IKEA hacks to help achieve the luxurious look he loves in design, when his budget doesn't always stretch that far.