Soft forms
If you look around at new furniture, curves are everywhere.
Here’s the front image from the CB2 homepage at the time of writing. Every single piece -- the sofa, the coffee table, the console, the vase, the lamp -- is curved.
Image source. CB2 is all about curves right now.
Even Gwyneth Paltrow has gotten into the soft forms furniture game. The photo above features the GOOP-designed Curvo shearling sofa, part of a larger collaboration with CB2 that includes many, many, many curved pieces.
This trend echoes mid-century design (check out this likely GOOP ancestor), and it’s been gaining momentum for the past few years. Curved lines are a top trend at the world’s largest home furnishings trade show (running this week), so we’ll likely see even more rounded, organic shapes in stores over the next few months.
Today, I want to argue that the curved furniture trend caught us just at the right time. We’re stressed, the world is uncertain, and we’re spending a lot of time at home. People are putting more time and care into home improvement projects, and a calm and relaxing home has become a priority for many.
So, here’s the lucky trend timing: curves happen to be very comforting.
Preference for curves
There’s nearly a century of empirical research showing that people prefer curved lines over straight lines. Early research found that people find sharp angles unpleasant, while curves “suggest grace, serenity, and most of those physical and mental qualities acquired in civilization and education.” No pressure.
The pattern has been consistent, and decades of subsequent work found that the preference holds when it comes to lines, shapes, objects, and spaces.
A few years ago, a study extended this line of work to look at preferences for curved and straight-line furniture. It’s important to note that this study was conducted before the curved-furniture trend picked up, so responses to this style were not driven by the fashion of the day.
In the study, 111 college students saw four images of indoor furniture scenes presented one at a time. The scenes varied as to whether the furniture had curved or straight lines but were otherwise identical. They were all grayscale, and the furniture, walls, floors, and carpets had the same texture. They were pretty plain, as you can see below.
Image source. Examples of curved and straight-line furniture scenes.
People were asked about how they felt viewing each scene. They rated how much pleasure they felt using different scales (e.g., annoyed/pleased, bored/relaxed) and they also rated how much they wanted to approach each scene and interact with others in it (e.g., How much time would you like to spend in this room?, To what extent does this place make you feel friendly and talkative to a stranger who happens to be near you?).
People felt more pleasant feelings, like feeling relaxed, peaceful, and calm, when viewing the scenes with curved furniture. They also wanted to approach these settings and to interact with others more in these scenes.
Follow-up interviews revealed that people thought the scenes with curved furniture looked more comfortable. For example, one person explained: “I like the rounded shapes. They make the furniture look comfortable and inviting, like I could lie on the couch and read for several hours.” The curved furniture scenes were also more interesting and calming. As another person reported, “the rounded furniture seems to give off that calming feeling.”
Curved furniture for our time
Based on these findings, curved furniture might be the right kind of furniture for our time. Comfortable, inviting, and calming are just the kind of things we want our homes to be when we’re spending more time in them than at any other point in our lifetime.
As social distancing restrictions ease up, we’ll once again meet with people in our homes and in public spaces. Even if their effect isn’t huge, perhaps curved furniture could encourage us to relax and be more open when engaging with others in these potentially stressful situations.
The curved furniture trend ties in with biophilia—people’s innate desire to connect with the natural environment. It’s an idea we’ve talked about before (in classrooms and outdoor schools, in leisure activities, in public spaces, and online). Natural environments can reduce the after-effects of stress: physiological arousal and negative mood.
Rounded, organic furniture shapes evoke the kind of shapes found in nature, which might explain why they’re so calming and increase positive feelings. Another popular trend, natural materials, also fits this pattern.
Do some people like curves more than others?
Ok, ok, people like curves. But do some people like curves more?
A more recent study examined whether there are individual differences in curve preferences.
In this study, 119 college students viewed and rated shapes in two separate tasks. In one task, the shapes were irregular polygons. Half were angular and half were curved. After each shape, people rated how pleasant, interesting, and complex the image was.
Image source. Examples of angular and curved irregular polygons.
The other task used arrays of regular shapes – hexagons and circles. Again, people rated how pleasant, interesting, and complex each image was.
In order to understand whether curve preferences were consistent, the researchers measured the difference in the pleasantness ratings each person gave to the curved vs. the angular shapes in the two tasks.
Overall, in both tasks, people liked the curved shapes more – they rated them as more pleasant than the angular shapes. And, these differences were consistent. People who liked curved shapes more in one task tended to prefer them more in the other task, too.
The researchers collected a number of other measures to try to predict people’s preference for curves.
For the irregular polygons, artistic experience made a difference. People who were more familiar with art and art history showed a stronger preference for the curved vs. the angular polygons.
Likewise, the personality trait of openness to experience predicted a stronger preference for curves. People who are high in openness to experience have a greater aesthetic appreciation, are more inquisitive, more creative, and less conventional. It’s a trait that also affects how we spend our money and what stuff we have in our homes, a topic we explored earlier here.
These results washed out for the hexagons and circles task – neither artistic experience nor personality predicted a preference for circles, perhaps because these shapes are so familiar and have a number of automatic associations.
Still, it might not be a total coincidence that the curved furniture trend is brought to us by a group of people who likely know more about art and have a greater aesthetic appreciation than an average Joe – designers.
But now the rest of us get to benefit.
Time will tell if curved furniture will stick around a bit longer than a typical trend, but I bet it’ll go strong for at least as long as we need it.