For keeping track of this fall’s decor trends, you might want your GPS handy.

We’re headed into the urban jungle, then off to the Great Continents. Designers have also set the Wayback Machine for the 1970s.

Additional Photos

The tread stoneware bowl by CB2 is an example of designer using city streets as both literal and figurative inspiration. The Associated Press/CB2

Verner Panton’s System 1-2-3 dining chair has been reproduced by Design Within Reach. The Associated Press/Design Within Reach

The Bar Boy is a mobile cylinder of moving components. The Associated Press/Design Within Reach

A look at what’s ahead:

METROPOLITAN CHIC

Designers are using city streets as both literal and figurative inspiration this fall, with pieces that have urban edge.

French designer Philippe Nigro’s Tu table for Ligne Roset is a sleek wood slab anchored to the floor with industrial, leggy, steel clamps in white, ebony or red. Target has a steel-based accent table with a faux concrete top.

CB2’s fall collection includes a stoneware bowl etched with a tire tread pattern; Matthew Lew’s striking black and white prints of Chicago architectural details; and the Bingo rug, with a black, white and yellow graphic resembling city lights at night. Ted Boerner’s Reverie media cabinet, crafted of blackened steel and textured glass door panels, evokes an urban warehouse facade.

Rare Device stocks Ferm Living’s cool map-of-Paris wallpaper. Brooklyn-based Haptic Labs embroiders quilts and throws with neighborhood maps of New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Bespoke Global co-founder and lighting designer Gwen Carlton enfolds a lightbulb with a silvery sculpted branch to create her Urban Forest pendant; she’ll make the fixture in a custom size and finish.

SILK ROAD STYLE

From Indian bazaars, African souks and Asian markets we’re seeing a feast of colors, patterns and style elements.

Homegoods has floor poufs in vibrant cerise, lime and lemon hues in a riot of patterns. Watch for sequin embellishments, elephant and tiger motifs, homespun kalamkari prints, and metallic embroidery on cottons, silks and voiles from retailers like Urban Outfitters and World Market.

Pottery Barn goes Moroccan with mango wood carved wall medallions, and stitched leather poufs. (Poufs, those pillowy versions of the ottoman, are popping up all over this fall.)

Wisteria has African kuba cloth pillows featuring graphic patterns woven from raffia-palm fibers. And at Anthropologie, indigo-hued bedding, pillows and notebooks in Old World and Japanese Shibori-style prints.

Mumbai native Reeta Gyamlani uses intricately carved camel bone and resin to craft gorgeous consoles and side tables for her Farrago label, also available through Bespoke Global.

THAT ’70S SHOW

Before visions of macrame plant hangers and foiled wallpaper start crowding your brain, remember that the late ’60s and early ’70s also saw a lot of terrific design.

Design Within Reach has reproduced several of Danish-born Verner Panton’s pieces, including the System 1-2-3 chair, a swivel-based, cantilevered ribbon of coolness, upholstered in orange or gray. There’s a tufted lounge version in chocolate leather. Panton’s Barboy is an ingenious ebony mobile cylinder of pivoting components.

It’s not all serious chic, though — ’70s style accessories are affordable fun. The Marimekko collection at Crate and Barrel is the era at its best, with clean bright colors and prints that pop. Look for retro Bargello flame stitching, paisley prints and granny squares on rugs, toss pillows and other soft furnishings at Target and Pier 1.

Trend spotters are watching some other directions, too: nail-head detailing, and hammered, tarnished metallic finishes, for example. And, after several seasons dominated by contemporary design, a Victorian look is mixing things up. We’re noticing traditional and reworked English prints, as well as trunks and suitcases with an antique, luggage-y vibe.

Home decorators can go in many interesting directions when updating for fall.

Related Stories