As a leading Belgium marketing agency, we love to watch brand behaviour on social media. Recently we looked at pet care brands leading the way in posts and yes… tweets! Today we’re looking at home furnishing brands on social media. How is the sector faring throughout 2020’s lockdowns and economic twists and turns? Which home furnishing brands are winning in the content and social media space?

An Overview of The Home Furnishing Market

Home Furnishing refers to anything from sofas and beds, wallpaper, kitchenware or accessories like candles and ornaments. With the rise of photography based social media channels like Instagram, interior designers have sprung up offering design tips, room layouts and dazzling furniture solutions.

But have 2020’s enforced lockdowns and economic uncertainty helped or harmed the home furnishing market? Actually, the online home furnishing retail industry is benefiting from covid-19. With more people working from home or confined to home, attention has turned to improving home surroundings. This might mean redecorating, adding comfort items or turning a spare bedroom into a home office. The key to success here though is online shopping. Let’s look at the latest stats:

· The global home decor market was valued at $616.6 billion in 2019, and is estimated to reach $838.6 billion by 2027.

· The chart below shows the furniture and home furnishing store monthly retail sales in the United States from January 2017 to July 2020. You can see the dip in April 2020 when sales fell to 3.9 billion U.S. dollars as covid-19 worries spread. You can then see a dramatic recovery as people began spending again.

The Latest Home Furnishing Trends

- Instagram's most popular home accessory trends for 2020 has been curated based on hashtag mentions. Gallery photo walls took the top spot. Hoop art, French antiques and plants, took the second, third and fourth spots.

- An emphasis on conservation and the environment is showing up in home decor, with re-use and upcycling a big trend.

- Thrifted home décor is also popular, up 308% in Pinterest searches this year. This includes any kind of project that turns something old into something new.

- Home theatre design is up 368% on Pinterest. Likely due to closure of theatres around the world and our need to curl up with a bucket of popcorn to watch a movie. Probably for the same reason, searches for home coffee stations are up 751%.

- Decluttering and organising is a huge theme, with Marie Kondo, author of “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and Netflix “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo” hitting the top spot.

So, in this fiercely competitive space, who’s winning the battle on social media? Here are our top picks.

#1 IKEA

Swedish flatpack furniture retailer IKEA is a favourite of ours. Not only because we love its innovative designs and affordable prices. But also because of its ingenious and adaptable social media campaigns. The brand continues to go from strength to strength fully utilising channels like Instagram and Tiktok to reach its demographics.

On Insta, IKEA neatly separates its products by room making it easy for users to find what they are looking for.

They also team up with big brands like Lego. This collection is colourful, fun and amplifies their reach by getting in front of Lego’s 6.3 million followers.

On Facebook we see Ikea hitting that organisational trend time and time again. Notice how their posts always include links to buy online and catalogue hashtags for anyone searching “Ikea Catalogue”.

They are also bang on trend with posts about room separators and space saving. Ideal if you have recently had to adapt to working from home perhaps adding an office space in a small apartment.

And it’s a 2020 winner too. After the COVID-19 outbreak, IKEA created a campaign around the idea of staying at home. Ikea Spain paid tribute to our homes. This ad campaign reminds us what home means. It’s where we have celebrated good news, where we can be ourselves. With #YoMeQuedoEnCasa(#StayHome), the commercial avoids a direct sales message, and grabbed over 1 million views in a week. This reminds us of the importance of localisation and humanising your brand.

On the subject of Stay Home, the brand also delivered some funny messaging like the ad below. Lock, key toilet paper. We hear you Ikea!

Ikea is big on Instagram and often uses the platform to garner insights about user’s furniture posting habits. That’s why it created the Müpolash. Say what? The thinking behind the famed Belgian campaign is this. If Ikea’s mugs, pots, lamps and shelves are getting a ton of impressions on social media, then the Müpolash, a combination of those things, should be the most Instagrammable thing ever made.

The Müpolash came in white—the most Instagrammed colour. It was environmentally-conscious, made of 100% biodegradable materials, and was crafted through 3D printing.

Steal Their Style

ü Conducting research on social media should be a vital part of your strategy. Instagram and Pinterest provide vital stats for home furnishing retailers. Check out the Pinterest top 100 here.

- Speaking of Pinterest, 90% of weekly Pinners make purchase decisions on Pinterest. Be sure to have a presence complete with shoppable pins like Ikea.

- Utilise Tiktok for short videos on assembling furniture, styling a room or creating a décor hack. Ikea has 907 million mentions on the channel with the brand putting out simple and helpful videos.

- Remember that as fashions change from season to season, so do home décor trends. There’s no use promoting your sunny beach towel range in December when everyone wants cosy fireplaces, fluffy blankets and hot cocoa! Mark key dates like Halloween in your diary and create campaigns ahead of time that show off your range accordingly. The Pin below was aimed at those celebrating Halloween at home in 2020.

- 2020 furniture retailers must emphasise online shopping and fast, cost effective shipping or delivery. Adding a threshold like Ikea did below is a good way to ensure the spend is worth the free delivery.

#2 Home Depot

Home Depot is another Moondust favourite. Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement retailer with nearly 400,000 associates and more than 2,200 stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

So, the company has the money for fancy paid ads but their organic social media is totally awesome too.

We love the user created content by Home Depot. That involves tagging artist and creators in the design and décor space like @aventureiranacozinha who has 16k+ followers.

And @rachel_metz/ with 73k.

Plus, there’s user curated posts like this. You know that pets are Instagram winners, right?

Home Depot floor employees handle customer interaction on a face-to-face level. However they are also listed as experts on Home Depot's How To Blog like Chris shown below. There are so many reasons why this is a winning tactic. You’ve got authenticity, knowledge, employee advocacy and relatability to name a few.

They have created heart-warming stories like this (is someone cutting onions?)

Home Depot Employees Build Walker For 2-Year-Old Boy Out Of PVC Pipe For Free

Mini video series like this one are a great idea too. With more people at home watching “how to” videos and adding house plants this is a winning combination. Notice again that there is no hard sell, just a lovely smiley Eileen giving useful planting tips. We love this!

Steal their Style

- Humanizing your brand is key in 2020. We have missed out on in person contact so we seek it from brands online instead. 86% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support. 81% said that they need to be able to trust the brand to buy from them.

- Show the smiles you get from community initiatives or workshops like this one. Just remember to get permission before you post customers (especially children) on your Instagram!

- Tap into online shopping FOMO and social proof with some “best deals”, “most popular” or “selling fast” Pins. Highlighting these boards makes it tempting for users to impulse shop, especially if items are limited.

- Cheeky gifs on Twitter get great feed engagement. Is it just us or does this look like a certain US president?

#3 Knoll

Moving away from fun and people focused home furnishing brands and moving into sheer Insta elegance. Meet Knoll. Using hashtag #myknoll to encourage its customers to share pictures of their purchases, the brand is a gallery of elegance from all over the world.

Knoll emphasises sustainability on its website. This is key especially for millennial and Gen Z consumers who, more than ever, demand to know how things were sourced and made.

There’s a vintage Hollywood style elegance to Knoll too. In Insta posts like this the brand shows off its 80-year history. Insta pics of the founders Hans and Florence Knoll combine elegance, fun and history.

David Rockwell, Antenna Design, Barber Osgerby, Formway Design, Don Chadwick, David Adjaye, and Rem Koolhaas are all icons that appear in the company’s content archives.

We love the timeline and emphasis on the company’s solid history in the design space.

Plus Insta posts that commemorate great designers.

Even in modern images, there’s a subtle nod to the company’s vintage roots:

Focusing on home offices is hot right now and we love the pet bed by the desk. Remember to write great captions too. Knoll sells the vision before it promotes the product.

Steal Their Style

- Knowing your target audience is key. While Ikea is a good low cost all rounder that could appeal to every demographic, Knoll is not. With single chair prices at around the $4000 mark, the elegant posts appeal to a certain earner.

- Set the scene for your products. There’s something very Great Gatsby about this photo isn’t there? Conjure up romance, mood and desire with the right lighting and great photography. Your photo will be shared over and over.

- Add a story to your products. Look at how much information buyers can view on the company’s shopping catalogue.

- Meet the team or meet the directors is great for Twitter. We are all curious (ok nosey) to peak into the lives of company founders and an intriguing image and caption will improve web traffic.

- This year, more than ever before it has been important for marketers to sense the tone. Right now, it’s creating a safe home space. This Facebook post nails it. Whether it’s elegant single living or a cosy family space, your décor or home furnishing brand can hit the sweet spot with social media.

Special Mentions

There are so many great home furnishing brands it would be impossible to mention them all. But here are a few more we love on social media.

Casper takes a scientific approach to product design, claiming to have “engineered” their mattresses, bed frames, pillows, and sheets for optimum sleep. We love how they utilise Linkedin to address key issues. Vote first, Nap Later!

Article is a Vancouver-based company whose tagline says it all: “Spend Less. Live More.” Their captions and overall Instagrammable loveliness are evident in each post. “Marigold Yellow is like an endless summer right in your very own living room.”

Jo Malone London the exclusive fragrance and candle company is killing it on Instagram. Showcasing short, elegant videos that capture the exclusive, vintage aspect of the brand. What a masterpiece!

Top Home Furnishing Hashtags on Instagram

Want to get your furniture or home decor brand seen on social media? Make sure you use the right hashtags. Here are the most popular ones.

#homedecor #interiordesign #home #interior #decor #design #homedesign #homesweethome #handmade #art #decoration #furniture #interiors #architecture #homedecoration #vintage #interiordesigner #homestyle #diy #walldecor #livingroom #interiorstyling #luxury #shabbychic #inspiration #instahome #style #house #homeinspiration #homestyling #lifestyle #flowers #photography #renovation #casa

Did you enjoy reading about The Best Home Furnishing Brands on Social Media? If you did then hit share or tweet us your favourite. Moondust works with a variety of ambitious brands looking to shine on social media. Want more style for your social media accounts? Talk to our team now.