NeoCon's 57th edition gathered 55,000 design professionals from 88 countries at THE MART in Chicago over four days, organized around the theme "Where Design Connects." With 450 brands across nearly a million square feet of showrooms, installations and product launches, there was no shortage of ground to cover.
Swatchbox had a booth on the 7th floor, where visitors could chat about the platform, learn more about the Second Life Samples program and interact with the beautiful samples on display. Swatchbox Designer in Residence Annemarie Casino curated six collections specifically for the event. The collections - Blues, Coastal Breeze, Fresh Sage, Sunsets, Garden Party, and Frosty Flora - were each built around a material story with products she selected personally from the platform and gave visitors something tangible to engage with. All of the samples from Annemarie's NeoCon curation are available to order on Swatchbox Pro.
Swatchbox and Daltile also hosted a VIP Rooftop Soirée at LondonHouse Chicago, which was an evening we won't forget for a while. The rooftop views across Chicago were spectacular, but it was the conversations that made the evening. Thank you to Daltile and to every designer, architect, and friend who joined us.
Annemarie walked the showrooms throughout the week, and she noticed a few trends for this year's event.
1. Workplace Hospitality
The office has been borrowing from the residential playbook for a while now, but at NeoCon 2026 that influence felt more refined and considered than ever. Designers are taking inspiration from hospitality spaces to create office interiors that center around warmth and connection.
An example of this is Shaw Contract's Cult Classics collection. Spanning carpet tile, broadloom, rugs, LVT and porcelain tile, the range draws on visual references that have shaped culture across decades.
Cult Classics by Shaw Contract
2. Details
There was a consistent move across the show toward surfaces and objects that reward closer attention. Richer textures, handcrafted details, and materials with genuine character are displacing the kind of finishes that read as safe and anonymous. The shift feels hospitality-driven in the most useful sense: a growing expectation that commercial spaces should feel considered rather than assembled.
Bulo Furniture's Monica Conference Lounge Chair, designed by Gensler, pairs a wheeled base with a draped, upholstered soft shell, a deliberate contrast between hard and soft, static and fluid. The organic form gives the chair a comfort level that works equally well pulled up to a conference table or placed in a lounge setting, and the quality of the materials and construction is apparent up close. Thoughtful and timeless are the words that came to mind for Annemarie.
Monica Conference Lounge Chair by Bulo Furniture
BuzziTent Light by BuzziSpace brings the details conversation to the ceiling. Designed by Alain Gilles and inspired by the overhead structures of French guinguettes, the suspended PET felt piece treats lighting as a textural and architectural element rather than a purely functional one. The integrated LED is adjustable in a way that shifts the quality of light from soft and ambient to focused and task-oriented, giving designers direct control over how a space feels at different points in the day. Made from 60% recycled PET felt and designed to be fully disassembled and recycled at end of life, it's a product that points toward the circular economy conversation that was also gaining ground across the show.
BuzziTent Light by BuzziSpace
3. Circular Design
Sustainability claims have long been a fixture of trade show floors, but the conversation at NeoCon 2026 has been turning to circular design in particular.
A great example of circular design is the ARCHISONIC Natura Cotton line by Impact Acoustic. The products are fully circular, meaning they can be returned, inspected and processed into new ARCHISONIC Natura products, keeping material in use rather than sending it to landfill. The circularity is integrated from start to finish, and the full material story is available to designers who need to account for end-of-life in their specifications.
ARCHISONIC Natura Cotton line by Impact Acoustic
Another circular product highlighted at NeoCon is Andreu World's Bolete Lounge BIO. The chair's base is made from BIO thermopolymer, a 100% natural, biodegradable, and compostable material that returns to the earth rather than the landfill at the end of its life. The single upholstered module allows for individual and curved configurations, making it adaptable across a range of settings without requiring additional pieces. Andreu World took home seven Best of NeoCon awards this year, partly due to how well the collection balances design quality with a material story that holds up to scrutiny.
Bolete Lounge BIO by Andreu World
If you're looking to bring more circular thinking into your design practice, the Swatchbox Second Life Samples program is a good place to start.
4. Privacy
Open floor plans remain the dominant approach in commercial interiors, and the tension between collaboration and focused work hasn't gone anywhere. What's changing is how manufacturers are responding to it. At NeoCon 2026, the solutions felt more architecturally considered and materially inventive than the movable screens and soft partitions of previous years.
Borgo Seating's Privée offers privacy through an upholstered canopy. The collection's pieces wrap the user in a padded, upholstered enclosure, with an interior frame of steel, ribbed stitching detail on the exterior, and a zipper closure. The canopies are lined with sound-absorbing recycled polyurethane, and the structures feel inviting rather than confining.
Privée by Borgo Seating
Color and Material Themes
Running alongside those trends was a broader set of themes at this year's NeoCon. Sensory comfort, lighting quality, acoustics, biophilic materials, and environments that support mental wellbeing and social connection were implemented all over the event. Slowly, consideration for health and wellbeing in interior design are moving beyond nice-to-haves and becoming baseline expectations.
Ruelo™ by Arktura
Color told its own story this year, and it was more layered than any single palette trend can capture. Brown came back in a serious way, showing up across furniture, textiles, wallcovering, carpet, and acoustics. Not as a default neutral, but as a warm, deliberate anchor that pulls commercial spaces toward something more residential and livable. The grey of the last decade is receding further, replaced by neutrals that feel earthy and grounded. Sage and olive greens and aquatic blues continue to appear, functioning less as accent colors and more as a calming base that carries the wellness and nature-reference conversation without making a statement of it.
Takeform Showroom
At the richer end of the spectrum, oxblood stood out. Bold, sophisticated applications showed what the color can do when it's given room to work rather than used as a cautious accent. The depth it brings to a space is hard to replicate with anything softer. On the other end, soft pastels, muted pinks, lavenders, and dusty tones appeared across the floors in refined ways . The industry has found a more assured register for these lighter hues, one that feels considered and mature rather than trend-chasing.
SoftBrick Modular Lounge Seating by Stylex Design
The strongest takeaway from NeoCon 2026 isn't a single trend or product category. It's that the gap between good design and responsible design is narrowing. The products Annemarie found on the floor this year were warmer, more considered and more attuned to the people using them than previous years. Workplace hospitality, privacy, circularity, and material detail are each part of that shift, and the products Annemarie found on the floor this year suggest the industry is moving in that direction with real intention.
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