Our increasingly digitised world has made Pinterest into both a boon and a bane to the interior design industry. It can be supremely useful to document your interest, organise your research, and create a visual brief for your designer. On the flip side, it might stifle creativity if one only seeks to copycat and emulate a look, as opposed to adjusting the design concept to one’s own context.
For most design aficionados and current or future homeowners looking to do up their spaces, though, Pinterest is a good starting point to their design journey.
First launched in a beta mode in March 2010, the app has 444 million users today, which is a good number to gauge industry trends, especially in the home decor sector, which seems to be thriving in the pandemic as we spend most of our time at home.

The new year presents an opportunity to start fresh. In fact, Google search interest for ‘interior design style’ in the first week of 2022 increased by 40 per cent.
Uswitch, an online and telephone comparison and switching service that helps customers compare prices on a range of products and services, analysed over four million pins across Pinterest during the last quarter of 2021 to find out which decor style is the most desired across each room of the house, as well as the most popular interior design trends on the platform. (More of Uswitch’s findings here.)
With that being said, here are Pinterest’s 10 most sought after styles according to room, and what we think about them, from the last place to first place.
The utility room is defined as a room equipped with appliances for washing and other domestic work, which, in most Singapore flats, translate to the yard area. Pinterest shows that the rustic style is all the rage for this area.
Think of an earthy colour palette of deep greens, browns and neutrals inspired by aged materials like distressed wood and leather and artistically rusted metal for a charming weathered look.
Coastal design became the second favourite with 67 pins and the third most popular is the shabby chic style with 60 pins.
An attic in Singapore is always worthy of a celebration, if only because it’s a rare thing. There’s a certain magic about the space, where forgotten antiques and precious heirlooms reside.
It is no wonder that the most popular style keyword for this room is vintage. Think of secondhand or heirloom furniture, nostalgic tiles and a retro colour palette.
The second most popular according to Uswitch is rustic interior with 2,577 pins followed by Victorian at 1,198 total pins. We Pinterest users definitely have a romantic notion of an attic.
What is a family room and how does it differ from a living room, you might ask? It’s the degree of formality and the location of the room within the house, we’d say.
The living room is usually one of the largest located at the front part of the house that serves as a formal reception to entertain visiting guests while the family room is placed further into the floorplan, near the backyard. These distinctions, of course, exist in typical landed homes with front- and backyard popular in many parts of the world, including the US, where most Pinterest users are.
In Singapore, where the majority of homeowners live in flats, the function of the two spaces are rolled together in the living room (which we will talk about later), which is fine and dandy. Anyway, the separation between formal (living room) and informal (family room) social spaces is all but obsolete in today’s contemporary lifestyle, where we live more flexibly and informally.
But in Pinterest context, the family room occupies the eighth spot of the most popular search. And the number one sought after style in this room? Rustic, with a total of 11,664 pins, indicating a preference for rugged finishes, worn-in and comfortable soft surfaces and materials that age with grace. In the second place is coastal design, followed by traditional (American) style.
Shabby chic, a style term coined in the late ’80s, celebrates ‘shabby’ finishes, making imperfection in upcycled or restored old furniture a feature rather than a flaw. Think of charming painted wood and your grandmother’s reupholstered furniture.
Its popularity today perhaps can be attributed to our longing for comfort and familiarity, especially in a social space like the dining room, where we socialise over meals.
The second favourite style for the dining room, however, is cut from a different cloth. Contemporary style places second with 19,964 pins, perhaps indicating our wish for an updated open dining room that is easy to maintain and suggests a more relaxed ambient as the dining table now pulls double duty as a work desk or meeting room.
Rustic style, which we think is the cousin of shabby chic, places third with 17,896 pins.
Another rarity in the Singapore context, the basement in the western culture is usually relegated as a private playroom or a den. Rustic style reign supreme here as well, with 24,400 pins. Perhaps this correlates with how the basement is usually dedicated as a man cave, which ubiquitously translated to rustic style’s rugged aesthetic.
Industrial look takes the second place with 18,486 pins. Think of a sleek home theatre and playroom with exposed lightbulbs, brick wall and steel details.
The third look has a significantly lower number of pins: 1,682 for Bohemian style. think of fabric wall partition, heaps of cushion and ottomans in the bright colour palette.
The pandemic has made the home office a necessary area in our home. Perhaps it is the corporate formality softened by cool start-up culture that bleeds into our home that has made the industrial look the reigning champion in this room with 52,163 pins.
Think open spaces, bare brick walls, and creativity-inspiring knick knacks that says you are cool but also means business.
This room’s second most popular interior theme is vintage, gaining 42,668 pins followed by minimalist, which has 38,866 total pins.
The home office, perhaps, is today’s most formal area within our house, thanks to the more relaxed lifestyle we have adopted during the pandemic.
The bedroom is twinning with the dining room, with 119,961 pins for shabby chic.
A shabby chic bedroom staple includes pastel colours and vintage, reworked or upcycled furniture, which creates a comforting blend
Bohemian style takes second place 106,793 pins, indicating a similar search for a relaxed and informal bedroom vibe, with more saturated colours.
The third place, in the meantime, is occupied by a minimalist look, particularly those inspired by Japanese design, indicating the need for restful simplicity and zen in the bedroom.
Perhaps the only outlier in this list, the bathroom search tag is dominated by contemporary design, indicating the need for simplicity and cleanliness.
The second most popular bathroom search is vintage, which, at 88,400 pins, is just slightly above half of the minimalist’s number. We like our retro bathroom, but not as much as a contemporary one.
Following closely at the third place is surprise surprise, the rustic look at 81,838 pins, which shows bathrooms with natural elements like stones and live plants, and even an absence of wall enclosure inspired by resorts.
When you can’t travel, might as well design your home like your favourite holiday destination.
We demanded so much from our living room today. No longer is it only a place to watch TV, it could serve as a meeting room, a classroom or a yoga studio throughout the day.
With the dining room and kitchen, the living room form a triumvirate of social spaces in our homes. No wonder vintage has come out as the number one most pinned style for the space.
We’ve seen a surge of mid-century modern furniture in the space, as well as curated secondhand shops selling vintage furnishings in the last two years.
The second most popular theme according to Pinterest for the living room has a modest amount of pins comparatively. At just 81,114 pins, the coastal look shows a softer, blue-and-beige dominated scheme that points out to our longing for that relaxing resort vibe.
The third place goes to the minimalist look with 61,697 pins, which shows simple and sparsely furnished space where negative space offers greater flexibility.
No area within our home has evolved as dramatically as the kitchen. From a purely utilitarian area hidden from sight, it has become the heart of the home, the stage to bond and entertain, and a point of pride.
Food preparation is a multisensorial activity, and nothing triggers nostalgic memory or says that you are home, like the smell of a cooked meal. It is no wonder that, at a whopping 391,131 pins, vintage kitchen reigns supreme.
We’ve seen not only designers and homeowners creating a vintage look in their projects, but also appliances and furniture brands. Some of those, like Smeg and Kitchenaid, have made vintage vibe their brand signature. And we love them.
Following the vintage look with a respectable 255,235 pins is the Scandinavian style, which incidentally features many evergreen design languages and objects from the 50s, which reinforces our preference for a vintage look updated with a contemporary sensibility.
Trailing Scandinavian kitchen with a thin margin is the traditional kitchen with 254,661 pins, which shows a comfy, cosy, rustic kitchens that could have belonged to a multi-generational family.
This article was first published in Home & Decor.