We’re five days from closing the book on 2024, and for many in the home industry, that’s five days too long. This has been a rough year. The housing market remained stubbornly frozen; geopolitical conflict and a bitter election season made clients uneasy; and every week seemed to bring news of a new bankruptcy or fire sale acquisition.

Of course, our industry is highly fragmented, and some designers will have had their best year ever—the very high end remained strong, and a rise in renovation jobs made up for some of the whole-home projects that didn’t happen. Many brands also found ways to grow creatively amid a difficult landscape. And despite the doom and gloom, most in the industry agree that the bottom is in, and brighter days could be just around the corner.

With that in mind, here are the stories that defined 2024.

The Housing Slump
The biggest news story in the home industry this year was something that didn’t happen. A hoped-for rebound in the housing market failed to materialize, and this will go down as the worst year for home sales in three decades. By now, the culprits are familiar: elevated mortgage costs, high home prices and a sluggish buildup of new inventory. Despite a long-anticipated series of interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, home borrowing costs went up toward the end of the year.

Retail Misery
Immediately downstream of a brutal real estate market is pain among home retailers; when people don’t buy houses, they don’t buy furniture. The list of collapses and bankruptcies is a long one, from national chains like Big Lots, Conn’s and Lumber Liquidators to more niche regional players like Oka and Pirch. Mom-and-pop shops also had a rough year—there were scores of multigenerational local furniture stores that closed their doors across the country.

It seemed like everywhere you looked, there was bad news on the retail front: Banana Republic axed its big home play after little more than a year, while Canadian wholesaler Nuevo—a retail supplier—shuttered abruptly. And even the big resurrection story of the year, Surya’s relaunch of Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams, was centered around bringing back the brand’s trade business, not its retail footprint.

A Big Deal in Big Fabric
It seemed as though the fabric deal of the year was going to be Thibaut’s June acquisition of Rosemary Hallgarten. That lasted until early December, when Kravet—a family-owned business for more than a century—revealed it had sold a majority stake to private investment firm Dunes Point Capital. The Kravet family still leads the business, and CEO Scott Kravet told BOH that designer customers wouldn’t notice any day-to-day changes, but the move will have broader implications. Now, one of the biggest names in fabric is backed by a financial firm that has raised billions—what they do with that expertise and capital (more acquisitions would be a reasonable guess) could have profound effects on the to-the-trade industry.

DCOTA Drama
Charles Cohen, billionaire real estate magnate and owner of several design centers across the country, is no stranger to legal drama. When it was reported that one of his lenders, Fortress Investment Group, was suing him for hundreds of millions and that the Design Center of The Americas was up for a forced foreclosure, many industry watchers assumed it was just another headline-grabbing kerfluffle that would end with a settlement. However, as the year progressed, Cohen’s efforts to stave off a foreclosure auction only delayed the sale, and in early November, Fortress became the legal owner of the DCOTA for a hammer price of $76 million. What the investment group will do with the Dania Beach, Florida–based design center—and whether any of Cohen’s other design centers are in play—are stories for 2025.

Havenly Buys Everything
When Havenly acquired DTC furniture startup The Inside in 2022, it felt like a low-key one-off deal of convenience. Who knew it was the first conquest in a five-brand M&A campaign that shows no sign of slowing down? In 2024, Havenly CEO Lee Mayer picked up The Citizenry, St. Frank and Burrow (reportedly a nine-figure-revenue company) in quick succession. Along the way, she formally renamed the company to “Havenly Brands,” a subtle change, but one that formally acknowledges a truth that has long been apparent: Havenly’s core business is rolling up digital-first, millennial savvy home brands—not e-design.

Software Wars
The landscape of interior design project management software has long been a messy one, with lots of small players owning tiny fractions of the overall market. This year it got a little tidier. First came the news that Studio Designer had acquired Mydoma, a move meant to bring early-career designers into the company’s ecosystem. Then, Design Manager snapped up two contract- and hospitality-oriented software tools, setting up the company to work across a wider swath of the design industry. This year’s spate of acquisitions sets up the two private-equity-backed companies to duke it out for a somewhat nerdy but consequential prize: becoming the software that designers use to run their firms.

The Year of the Dupe
Few people had “Kim Kardashian and the estate of Donald Judd battle it out in court over a table” on their bingo cards for 2024, but it happened. Early in the year, the celebrity was sued for allegedly claiming in a video tour that she owned an authentic Judd piece, kicking off a wider conversation about the nature of authenticity and dupes in the design industry. Soon after, the furniture price comparison website Dupe.com launched and went viral, kicking off its own heated conversation (and a lawsuit from Williams-Sonoma). The subject is a controversial one, but there’s little doubt that dupes—long a hot topic in fashion and beauty—have come for the home.

Media Moves
Facing competition from social media, algorithm shifts from Google and the specter of AI disruption, the media is in a tricky spot—and design publications are no exception. Thankfully, there were no high-profile collapses this year, though once-hot site Hunker was quietly gutted and sold. Mostly, it was a case of moves made against a backdrop of change. First, veteran book publishing macher Jill Cohen took the top spot at Luxe. Then, Elle Decor editor in chief Asad Syrkett stepped down without a replacement—weeks before parent company Hearst laid off close to 200 employees. (Its rival Condé Nast also reduced head count in 2024.) If there was a bright spot this year, it was the rise of Substack, as writers like David Michon, Leonora Epstein (a Hunker veteran) and Sami Reiss gained attention for their unique design newsletters. Meanwhile, designers (notably, Kelly Wearstler) began experimenting with the platform themselves.