Sustainable lamps made from plastic bottles, long-lasting plant decorations, quirky and fun fabric vases and movable cherry wood furniture. Both established Spanish designers and young talents have an eye for future interior design trends and the environment. Here’s a handful of Spanish designers worth keeping an eye on and bringing home from your trip.
Every year, Spanish designers – and several international ones – gather at the Feria Hábitat València design fair to showcase their take on the future of home and interior design. At the weekend-long fair, you’ll find both established Spanish designers and a stand with a special focus on young Spanish design.
I visited the design fair in September 2023, where I handpicked five designers who are making a name for themselves with their designs and environmental awareness. And you can shop designs from most of them to take home from your vacation.
Feria Hábitat Valéncia has over 600 stands with home interiors and is visited by 48,000 professionals and private individuals.
1 Nature as interior design
Vertical gardens, rooftop gardens to Frida Kahlo portrait dressed in flowers and plants. Greenarea is a design studio from Valencia that connects design and nature in unique plant decorations. They do this with the philosophy that their sustainable decorations should improve the wellbeing of indoor spaces.
Greenarea collaborates with various designers to create plant decorations for walls, ceilings and planters in hotels, restaurants, businesses and private homes. Greenarea uses wood, moss and plants sourced from nature, but which do not require care, sunlight or artificial watering as they are preserved.
In Spain, you can see Greenarea’s plant decoration on the ceiling of Hotel Soho Boutique La Equitativa’s restaurant in Málaga. In the restaurant area of the Ametller chain in Barcelona, the ceiling and walls are covered in greenareas plant decorations, just as the walls are adorned with plant decorations at the Cañas y Tapas restaurant in Benidorm. Interest in Greenarea’s creative planting solutions is high, so keep an eye out for them when traveling around Spain.
2 Packable quality furniture
Clean, bright and simple. Young Spanish designer Isabel Alonso’s Defocus collection is reminiscent of Scandinavian design with its bright colors, materials and lightness. The Spanish designer holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art in London and has collaborated with poetic Swedish designer Monica Förster , among others.
The Defocus collection consists of a side table, a floor lamp and a clothes rack. The series is made of solid cherry wood and aluminum. The slim design makes the range suitable for homes where space is at a premium, and you can easily disassemble the individual parts, move them around as needed and reassemble them with the small metal clamps.
Unlike many other furniture kits, you don’t need tools to disassemble and assemble Isabel Alonso furniture. The aluminum clamps do the work and are designed to match the cherry tree. Isabel Alonso focuses on ensuring that the furniture is durable and can be passed down through generations. That’s why, unlike many other parcel furniture, the clamps are long-lasting and she makes a virtue of combining design with craftsmanship.
Traditional DIY furniture is associated with industrial processes and short durability. Alonso challenges that tradition by creating thoughtfully crafted furniture that is practical and easy to transport.
Alonso is very much in tune with the zeitgeist of reducing waste – including furniture, so keep an eye out for her.
3 Home decor with a sense of humor
“Smile, break the mold and be happy” is the motto of design company SANCAL. The 50-year-old Spanish design company employs many different designers who are constantly developing new interior designs that are both creative and simple.
“It is possible to design a happier world,” SANCAL says, and that they mean what they say is evident in their designs, which include everything from sofas, armchairs, benches and tables to coat hooks, rugs, bags, vases, calendars, notebooks and tattoos.
Easy to bring home in your suitcase, the colorful and different Flower Pot vase is made from textile and can be used as a stand-alone artistic sculpture, filled with dried flowers or cover a traditional vase or flower pot. The Flower Pot series unleashes creative play in cartoon characters that can bring a smile to even the sourest lemon. The vases are also available with a simple graphic pattern and in solid colors.
4 Recycled lamps from plastic bottles
Ole Lighting has managed to remove over 13 tons of plastic from the ocean and our environment since they launched the “Oceans Without Plastic” initiative in 2022. Every time a customer buys one of their lamps made from recycled plastic bottles.
The 30-year-old Valencia-based design company’s newest focus is to design sustainable lamps that provide good light and are modern and decorative. Their newest addition is their sustainable lamps
The recycled plastic is turned into cords that are dyed, hand-braided and shaped into graphic, simple lampshades. You can choose from ceiling, table and floor lamps with names like Banyo, Bimba, Drum, Kora and Kit Pop-Up.
Ole Lighting collaborates with interior designers and architects around the world, and you can see Banyo lamps in restaurants such as SAITI in Valencia and Hotel Barceló in Fuerteventura.
5 Textiles in natural materials
Linen bedding is hip for the home, and Spanish mikmax has a good selection that also includes throws and bedspreads. Mikmax creates home textiles in natural materials and colors, and the range also includes cotton bedding, pillows, blankets and towels, as well as silk loungewear. The design is classic and timeless, and the materials are of high quality.
Located outside Barcelona, Mikmax opened in 2007 and is run by designer Cristina Montaña. She focuses on the Mediterranean spirit and designs with simplicity, quality and respect for the original craftsmanship traditions. In addition to selling home furnishings to consumers from its own webshop and in stores, you can also fine Mikmax products in hotels and restaurants.
