New Romantic: The Interiors Trend Bringing Whimsy Back To Our Homes

The Romanticism revival isn’t just maximalism by another name. Where maximalism often celebrates visual accumulation – with lots of bold, bright colors and clashing prints and textures – this modern Romanticism is softer and more tonal. It is designed to feel tactile and cosseting – creating spaces that you can sink into like an enveloping hug. “In the drawing room of my Oxfordshire coach house, I introduced soft pinks on the walls, heavily tasseled leading edges in pinks and blues, and pastel striped fabrics on the sofas,” says Pooley. “It completely changed the feeling of the room and, for me, proved that feminine interiors can still feel elegant and grown-up.”

For Bull, that willingness to embrace traditionally feminine color is part of a wider loosening-up in interiors. “We’ve all experienced enormous upheaval in recent years,” she says, “and I believe our homes are responding to that. After years of pared-back, cool minimalism dominating design, people are coming home – quite literally – to spaces that feel genuinely nurturing and personal.” Rosewood Manor, one of HollandGreen’s recent projects, speaks perfectly to this mood, with bed linens in soft terracotta linens, pillowcases in subtle tonal florals, warm dusty-pink fabrics and elegant botanical wallpapers.

Fabric is the linchpin of the romantic trend revival, with designers using soft-touch finishes, tassels, trim and drapery to create a feeling of cradling closeness.

At Forter Castle, one of Pooley’s professional projects, she called on the power of drapery to “transform a room in so many ways beyond the traditional curtain,” she explains. “I use it throughout my own homes – from the four-poster beds in my master suites and the cozy tented ceiling in my shepherd’s hut to the British wool-lined walls at Forter Castle. These details soften architecture and create a feeling of intimacy that is very difficult to achieve with paint and furniture alone.”

There is plenty of historical precedent. Drapery has long been used to make grand rooms feel more intimate, from the upholstered walls and elaborate bed hangings of European country houses to the exuberant textile layering of Victorian spaces. The 2026 iteration is less outwardly ceremonious. A House of Lyria floral wool throw astride a Six The Residence fringed velvet pouffe; or a floral Ginori 1735 porcelain potiche next to a La DoubleJ satin-jacquard cushion: the interplay between decoration and informality is what stops the look becoming pastiche.

The theatrical possibilities of fabric are fun, too. Garden House by design firm De Rosee Sa is a more literal interpretation. In a bedroom designed for a young girl who loves staging puppet shows, senior interior designer Eliza Davey created a tasseled canopy that doubles as a miniature show curtain. A scalloped bulkhead frames the bed; blush and terracotta are offset by mustard and classic striped curtains, while a bobbin bedside table and raffia scallop lampshades emphasize the rejection of hard lines. “There is definitely something ‘new romantic’ about it: the drama, the softness and the willingness to be decorative,” says Davey.

Nature was fundamental to the origins of Romanticism and, two centuries later, amid another period of technological acceleration, it is easy to understand the renewed appetite for interiors that emphatically bring the outdoors back inside.

The connection is explicit in Pooley’s Oxfordshire coach house. Flower-and-butterfly wallpaper turns the walls into an imagined garden, while a sculptural vase covered in three-dimensional butterflies brings the motif to life.

Nineteenth-century textile artist William Morris famously argued that decoration should draw from the forms of nature, filling his wallpapers and textiles with curling acanthus leaves, honeysuckle, birds and fruit. Nature provides abundance, irregularity and fantasy – qualities that feel particularly seductive in homes that are surrounded by screens, technology and otherwise frictionless design.

With that in mind, it becomes a little easier to understand the mindset behind modern Romanticism. Far from typified by a bit of brocade or generous drapery, it is a call to become emotionally connected with your home again; to feel the soft, inviting warmth of curved edges and luxurious fabrics and to enjoy the intimacy – platonic or otherwise – that it inspires.