Wireless lifestyle brings new elements to home design

If retailers want to pace trends in home furnishings, they should be watching where young adults aspire to spend their time: boutique hotels, spas and at their laptops.

Designer Christopher Lowell points out that consumers increasingly are bringing home the experiences they have gone outside to pursue and are taking a lifestyle perspective on furnishing their homes.

Traveling with a contemporary sense of style is a way to take the holiday jaunt a step further, so the growing market for ecotourism, for example, has shifted from rough and ready, to comfortable and elite.

The travel industry is working with designers like Lowell to customize the experience, and consumers are encountering more than knick-knacks as they pass through their destinations. Thus, they will bring home substance and style for their own entertainment.

As for everyday experience, Lowell says that the shift to laptops and Wi-Fi means that home and office spaces will change as consumers no longer are confined to clunky CPUs and binding cables.

In upcoming work on his furniture collection for Office Depot, Lowell plans to accommodate the new style of computing, featuring innovations that hide the Wi-Fi and encourage freedom of movement.

If he’s right—and he’s been right before—all retailers have an opportunity to profit from the shift to laptops that has impacted the electronics sector.