Recent years have been shaped by a very cool reading of minimalism: lots of grey, lots of white, lots of right angles. Spaces that were rationally "correct", but often emotionally empty. Now the tide is turning. Across the interior design trends for 2026, the same images keep appearing: earthy warm tones, rounded sofas, organic table edges, upholstered panels instead of hard walls. "Warm minimalism", "soft modernism", "biophilic design 2.0": the labels vary, but the conviction behind them is remarkably consistent.

Away from the dogma of cool, towards spaces that feel human.

This paradigm is increasingly described as humanistic, people-centred design: spaces that don't just function efficiently, but deliberately shape the emotional climate. There are good reasons for this. We spend a large part of our everyday lives on digital surfaces: flat screens, artificial light, brilliant colours without depth. Physical space mustn't become a second screen. It becomes the counterweight: tactile, soft, warm. Warmth in design is more than a colour choice. It is a response to an overheated, over-informed, accelerated world. Warm tones and soft curves are not "the next trend", but the quiet return of humanism to interior space.

Imagine colour expert Karl Johan Bertilsson (NCS) and designer Lucie Koldová at the same table, and a picture of this development emerges that goes far beyond moodboards.

Emotional precision rather than colour overload

For Karl Johan, warmth begins not with gut feeling, but with system. In the Natural Colour System (NCS), he describes warm tones as reddish and yellowish mid-tones with low to medium chromaticness. If saturation climbs too high, the emotional quality tips: closeness turns into overload.

Put simply:

• For large surfaces, warm tones with moderate chromaticness work best: those beiges, terracottas and muted ochres that don't shout, but breathe.

• For details, colours can be louder: a brick red on a sideboard, a saturated rust orange in a vase, a deep burgundy along an edge.

Warmth, then, is not an effect, but a question of measure. It becomes emotionally precise where three things meet:

• Medium lightness: neither pastel nor darkroom.

• Restrained chromaticness: more tone than trend.

• Context: light, material and use all have a say.

Then there are cultural and climatic factors: in northern latitudes, we need warmer light so that even neutral greys don't feel cold. Depending on the colour temperature of the light, one and the same colour can shift from "calm" to "frosty". Choosing colour becomes the precision engineering of atmosphere: not just "which shade?", but "in which light, on which material, for which use?".

Softness as a counter to digital hardness

On the other side of the equation is form. Prague-based designer Lucie Koldová has been working with soft, organic lines for years: lighting and furniture that recall floating clouds, droplets or hills more than objects. She describes softness as a response to a life that is becoming ever faster and more digital. Curves are not a "feminine detail", but a physical gesture:

• A sofa whose backrest holds the body like an arch.

• A table whose edge doesn't cut, but catches the wrist.

• A light whose glass volume doesn't dominate, but floats in the room like a soft body of light.

• Softness here doesn't mean a snuggly aesthetic, but:

• Transitions instead of hard breaks.

• Calm lines instead of aggressive geometry.

• Shaped closeness instead of decoration.

• Without a counterweight, however, softness can tip over.

A chair that is softly rounded everywhere, with no defined edge to its legs and no precise joint, loses its poise. It looks saccharine rather than warm, arbitrary rather than inviting. We all know the cloud-sofa phenomenon of the past decade, where comfort swallowed the design language. Soft forms therefore always need a touch of rigour: a clear line, a crisply drawn joint, an emphasised edge in the detail.

In dialogue, it becomes clear:

• Karl Johan sees warmth as a spectrum, between emotional precision and overload.

• Lucie sees softness as a conviction, between clarity and give.

Together, they sketch spaces that no longer demonstrate how rigorously they were designed, but how good they feel.

For a long time, the function of a piece of furniture was defined in technical terms: seating, storage, lighting. Today, that is no longer enough for many designers. A chair should not only support, but relax. A light should not only provide brightness, but carry a mood. A room should not only provide space, but warmth, closeness and respite.

In this sense, emotion becomes the new function:

• Warm tones create emotional closeness and psychological safety.

• Soft forms lower inhibitions and invite casual touch and physical ease.

• Tactile materials bring us back into our bodies, as a counterweight to a world of glass and pixels.

Karl Johan describes it as a move into an era in which spaces need to be perceived as "more human, softer and, to a certain extent, imperfect". That is precisely where the potential of warm tones and soft curves lies. They are not a fashion that will be over by next season. They express a temperament we are allowing our spaces once again. Trends come and go. Temperament stays.