Technology has long played a role in home design, from the introduction of electricity in the 1800s to the increasing role of artificial intelligence in automation today. I reached out by email to leaders in the home design and technology worlds for their insights on what they see coming our way in the new year. This is the first of a four-part series covering their perspectives, starting with the top AI home trend predictions for 2025.
Sustainability And Comfort Trends
Josh Christian, CEO of the Home Technology Association, anticipates significant advances in climate control by the technology learning our preferences and daily routines over time. “It adapts to your schedule, adjusting temperatures based on when you’re home, asleep, or away, ensuring optimal comfort and energy efficiency.” The systems are capable of analyzing both user patterns and weather data, he says, fine tuning our home environments. “As the system learns more about your habits, it becomes smarter, delivering the perfect temperature while reducing waste and lowering utility costs.”
Safety Trend
Mark Bryan, senior foresight manager with Future Today Institute, a corporate advisory firm, anticipates smarter, more helpful AI predicting, protecting and personalizing our spaces. “Your home becomes not just a place to live but a proactive partner in your daily life. AI-driven systems in 2025 will take customization and safety to the next level. Using real-time data and augmented reality, these systems will identify risks like slippery floors or hidden leaks, offering immediate solutions.”
Homeowner Capability Trends
Savour Partnership’s principal, Leslie Carothers, is a digital marketing consultant who frequently speaks at industry conferences on smart home and artificial intelligence trends. “AI will increasingly be used by homeowners to help them think through the best ways to design their rooms, find matching products online for the best price and purchase those products,” she predicts.
Amanda Pendleton, real estate platform Zillow’s home trends expert, shares that home buyers are most likely to invest in interior design and furnishings when they purchase a new home. AI tools available online can help inspire and inform their projects, she notes. “A top AI trend for home design in the coming year will be around virtual staging, allowing homeowners and home shoppers to even better visualize the look, feel, and layout of a home with different furniture, flooring, or fixture options before making permanent changes. This technology will continue to evolve and be a game-changer for buyers, sellers and homeowners.”
Rachel Hodgdon, president and CEO of the International WELL Building Institute is bullish on AI’s design support capabilities in the new year. “Homeowners will have far more power to be able to visualize and plan for their new builds and renovations. AI will not supplant the need for skilled designers and architects, but it may expedite the preliminary design phase as homeowners will have the tools to much more concretely and specifically envision their dream projects. Having just designed my own home, I can attest that it took many months of interviews, charettes and Zoom meetings with our design team to arrive at an initial concept and model; with AI comes the possibility that homeowners show up with both on Day One.”
Khoi Vo, CEO of the American Society of Interior Designers is equally bullish on AI’s accelerating potential, citing hyper-personalized AI tools emerging as a leading trend. “Platforms such as ProQuest and CoPilot empower homeowners to visualize every phase of the design process, providing clarity and customization to suit their unique needs,” he shares. The technology serves as a facilitator, making real-time adjustments, streamlining decision-making, and optimizing costs and timelines for home projects, he explains. “As AI tools like these grow increasingly intuitive and accessible, we expect market adoption to surge, making personalized and efficient design solutions a reality for homeowners.”
Process Trend
Daryl Friedman, global president and CEO of the CEDIA smart home technology trade association, has seen stronger ties between technology integrators, designers and homeowners as we increasingly automate our homes. He sees these ties increasing in the new year, in part because of the growth of AI. “As technology is becoming a central part of every home’s design, the interior designer and technology integrator will forge deeper partnerships to bring happiness to homeowners. Working as a team, tech will be seamlessly and unobtrusively woven into a home’s décor.”
Conclusions
Bill Darcy, global president and CEO of the National Kitchen & Bath Association, sums up the new technology’s potential for impacting both our thoughts and those of the professionals we hire for our projects: “I believe the real game-changer will be using AI to make deeply personal design decisions – helping designers and homeowners visualize spaces that not only look amazing, but are tailored to how they truly live, from functionality to sustainability.”
I’ve been watching these AI home trends evolve as both a design industry professional and a homeowner, with both strong enthusiasm about the potential capabilities and serious trepidations about the potential loss of privacy. As I wrote in a 2016 post on my weekly Gold Notes design blog, “The ability to connect your appliances with the Internet and your tablets or smart phones offers some terrific conveniences. You can check if you left the oven on from the office. You can be alerted if one of your kids left the refrigerator door open, or if there’s a mechanical issue with one of your appliances. There’s great potential for a repair pro to diagnose and maybe repair a problem remotely, and you can check whether you have eggs or laundry detergent while you’re at the store. There’s no doubt that our iPhones, Androids and web browsers have made our lives so much easier. They have also made them so much less private.”
While my five-year prediction about the risks of enabled data access and analysis provided by new technology has not come to fruition – yet! – AI makes it easier for that to happen. We’re in a brave new world. Let’s hope it’s more halcyon than Huxley-an.
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