Milan Design Week is in full swing, and whether at the Salone del Mobile, or the Fuorisalone surrounding the fair, the design world has descended on the city to soak up inspiration for some of the very best design brands and creatives from around the world.
Milan is currently awash with installations, showrooms, and pop-ups to see, but my favorite thing to visit at Milan Design Week are the apartments. These spaces, already epic in the sense of their beautiful Milanese architecture, are taken over and decorated during Design Week and often beyond, and open to the public, too. There's something particularly inspiring about seeing the ideas surfacing at the event played out in situ, as it were. Where sometimes installations have a 'stand-and-stare' sense to them, these apartments and salons put you in amongst the design, giving you a real sense of the effect the colors, materials, and forms have on the space.
This year, the apartments are particularly spectacular and serving up our editors and writers all kinds of inspiration. But, are there lessons to be learned in how to actually decorate your home? Yes, and they tie into the wider trends for design also emerging at the fair. Here are some of my favorites.
1. One Amazing Thing
Let's start with Artemest's L’Appartamento, this year at Palazzo Donizetti, (Via Gaetano Donizetti 48, Milan). Celebrating its 10 year anniversary, the brand has worked with six top designers on the rooms in its apartment this year, a tribute to Italian craftsmanship and design.
It's among the grandest, most spectacular displays at Milan Design Week, and the 'Reading Room', designed by Saudi-based design studio Nebras Aljoaib is no exception. There's not a room in the apartment you could say only has 'One Amazing Thing' in, but this design harkens to our theory that any room can hang on the strength of one good hero piece, in this instance, the incredible light blue Bottega Veneziana chandelier, that stands apart from the rest of the design.
2. The Power of Red
In the apartment's 'foyer', designer Simone Haag creates balance between the extravagance and subtlety that sit at either end of the Italian design spectrum. Much like the reading room above, there's a clear 'punctum' for this space — an inescapable bright red, lacquered coffee table.
Red remains a big color trend for Milan this year, especially now in larger items such as accent chairs, sofas, and particularly tables. We've already coined the 'red table trick' as the most expensive-looking design trend of 2025, and this design only reinforces our point.
3. A Sense of Scale
At Italian lighting brand Bocci's installation with The Future Perfect's David Alhadeff, it's unsurprising that the lighting is the star of the show. "The space is a masterclass in using scale and repetition in lighting," Livingetc's editorial director Sarah Spiteri tells me, after visiting the apartment.
For this bedroom lighting, a large, cloud-like pendant installation proves that the 'big light' isn't dead and, in fact, doesn't have to feel harsh. Throughout the apartment, the lighting is romantic and atmospheric, using recurring motifs that connect and flow through the rooms.
Find it at Via Giuseppe Rovani 20, 20123.
4. A Gleam in the Dark
At Muuto's design apartment, Via Solferino 11, 3rd floor, 20121 Milan, things take a colorful, modern turn. The contemporary Italian furniture brand uses this apartment, with its spectacular mosaic floors, each year, creating a sensory journey through the space with a bold application of color to set the scene.
In the modern living room, this year, the palette is dark and cocooning, but in how the room is put together, there's a lesson in how to decorate with dark colors successfully.
"Even more than you can appreciate in the photographs, there's a real sense of depth to the darkness in this room," stylist and Livingetc writer Luke Arthur Wells, who visited this apartment, tells me. "The light picks up the metallic threads in the sofa, the lacquer of the furniture, and of course the tiled fireplace. It has such dimension through this contrast of matte and shine."
5. Tonal Drenching
I remember, two years ago, Muuto's apartment drenched, almost entirely, in an acidic lemon yellow. Its approach this year uses color in not such a monotone way, adding more contrast with a more tonal approach to color drenching.
"The darker, forest-y green tones really help to ground the brighter lime green in the kitchen," Luke says, "while the shades inbetween help soften the look, making the transitions flow." It's double drenching at its finest.
6. Raw Forms
Brera Design Apartment, Via Palermo 1, should be another pitstop on your Milan itinerary, though its only open for the press right now by appointment, and to the public from May 2nd. Designed by Daniele Bortotto and Giorgia Zanellato, and informed by the Fuorisalone theme of 'Connected Worlds', 'Orizzonti' takes inspiration from the horizon across the rooms of this apartment in different ways.
The idea manifests through horizontal lines, paired with color, to create throughlines through the apartment, but what interests me most is the raw character it applies to the idea, even in a more graphic space like the dining room. The paint line isn't taped and precisely painted, but wavering and organic — a small detail that changes the feel of the space.
In the bathroom, the idea goes one step further, with an effect that feels like raw-edged stone, but created with mosaic tiles. If the dining area is daybreak, the bathroom undoubtedly represents dusk.
7. Ethereal Ombres
It's the interior design trend I wasn't sure I was ready to see again, but the ombre is making a return. However, echoing wider trends, these gradients are softer, more ethereal — think a 'desert haze' palette of warm, dreamy hues.
In the living area of the Brera Design Apartment, the palette introduces an interesting contrast to these pink and terracotta tones. A pop of vibrant butter yellow almost feels a little incongruous, but it works to offer a relief from the rusticity of these earth tones, elevating the space into something a little more modern.
If you want more inspiration fresh from Milan Design Week, stay with us — our editors our digesting what they're seeing and pulling together the essential edits for what you need to know, even if you couldn't make the journey to the Italian design capital this year.
