Inside Salone del Mobile 2025: The Trends Every Furniture Buyer Needs to Know
- Sunbin Qi
- Apr 8
- 6 min read
Every April, as if drawn by some magnetic force, the design world flocks to Milan. Not just for the espresso or the fashion week hangovers, but for something far more essential to the soul of the furniture industry: the Salone del Mobile.Milano. In 2025, this cornerstone event returns for its 63rd edition from April 8 to 13 at the vast and buzzing Fiera Milano Rho. But this year, it means more than ever.
As the CEO of ASKT Furniture, with more than two decades of experience supplying European markets, I see Salone not just as an exhibition—it’s a cultural compass. It orients us toward where furniture is heading, not only in form and function, but in meaning, ethics, and connection.
A Global Stage Bigger Than Ever
With over 2,100 exhibitors and more than 150 nationalities expected, Salone 2025 reaffirms Milan as the world's design capital. Spread across 169,000 square meters, the show is an intricate maze of innovation, imagination, and ingenuity. This year, 168 brands will make their debut, and 91 return after hiatus, showcasing the industry's renewed confidence and dynamism.
The numbers are impressive, but what they signify is even more meaningful: the Salone is a mirror reflecting the resilience and evolution of our industry. The presence of such a vast international audience underscores the trust and curiosity that global buyers, designers, and manufacturers place in this platform.
This event isn't just for trend-spotting. It’s about networking with thought leaders, absorbing cultural insights, and building the kinds of relationships that sustain the global supply chain. When I visit, I don’t just look for "what’s new." I look for why it matters—what pain points it solves, what stories it tells, and how it fits into the lives of real people.
Design Meets Culture: The Emotional Shift
One of the major shifts at this year's fair is the embrace of design as a cultural and emotional language. We are seeing a movement away from furniture as static utility, and toward design as an expressive, experiential medium. The shift is subtle but powerful—it’s about how furniture makes people feel, not just how it functions.
Take Robert Wilson's "Mother" installation at the Rondanini Pietà Museum. It's a poetic, light-and-sound homage to Michelangelo’s final sculpture. Wilson’s interpretation reframes motherhood and time—both slow, powerful, and universal. The use of light, gesture, and ambient sound creates an immersive emotional environment that forces viewers to reflect. It’s a reminder that our work as furniture makers is not just technical. It's deeply human.
Or consider Es Devlin’s "Library of Light" in the Brera Gallery, filled with over 2,000 volumes on the concept of illumination. It's part architecture, part storybook, and it invites visitors to reflect on the transformative power of knowledge and design. This installation creates a bridge between intellectual curiosity and physical space. This is a message I bring home to my R&D teams: don’t just build, think—think about context, emotion, and connection.
Sustainability in Action, Not Just Slogans
If there's one thing Salone makes clear in 2025, it’s this: sustainability has evolved from aspiration to expectation. The entire event is ISO 20121-certified, and exhibitors follow a detailed Green Exhibitor Guide. Every booth, every installation, is designed to be reused, recycled, or reimagined. Waste reduction is a baseline requirement, not a bonus.
At ASKT, we’ve already replaced plastic with honeycomb paper packaging, and invested in better material sourcing. But Milan always pushes us further. Now we’re exploring modular product systems to reduce excess inventory and durability testing protocols that extend lifecycle usability—not just warranties. We're rethinking the materials we use in our frames, exploring new eco-textiles, and improving our supply chain to minimize carbon emissions.
Even the visitor experience reflects this shift. Routes through the exhibition prioritize ergonomics, accessibility, and emotional well-being. This isn’t greenwashing. It’s systemic rethinking. It’s design with long-term impact in mind.
Euroluce Returns: Lighting the Future
Another exciting development is the return of Euroluce, the biennial lighting exhibition, now integrated within Salone. With 306 exhibitors, 45% from outside Italy, this year’s Euroluce explores light not only as a technical element, but as a cultural and scientific medium. From task lighting to ambient atmospheres, light becomes the lens through which we explore mood, clarity, and wellbeing.
What struck me most is the International Lighting Forum debuting this year. Talks by solar designer Marjan van Aubel, biologist Stefano Mancuso, and anthropologist Tim Ingold go far beyond LED specs. They explore light as language, emotion, and ecosystem. These cross-disciplinary perspectives add depth and urgency to how we integrate lighting into our furniture environments.
As a furniture manufacturer, that matters. Lighting affects the atmosphere of every room our products sit in. The lesson? Design doesn’t stop at the edge of the chair. We must consider the full environment—the air, the light, the acoustics, and the user’s emotion.
The Rise of Interdisciplinary Storytelling
Salone 2025 also puts a big spotlight on interdisciplinary storytelling. For example, Oscar-winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino collaborated on a dreamlike route called "La Dolce Attesa" inside pavilions 22 and 24. It blends furniture, music by Max Casacci, and visuals into a sort of living cinema. Visitors don’t just walk through a showroom—they walk through a mood, a memory, a metaphor.
And in Halls 13 and 15, Villa Héritage by Pierre-Yves Rochon interprets the idea of luxury not through excess, but through timeless craftsmanship and narrative-rich aesthetics. Every chair, every table tells a story. The space evokes a blend of nostalgia and innovation, honoring tradition while moving the definition of luxury forward.
As someone who believes that our ASKT showroom must feel like a home, not just a catalog, these experiences reinforce the value of emotional staging. We’ve started building out story-themed lifestyle rooms—like our "Berlin Balcony" and "Dutch Café" settings—that help European buyers visualize furniture in situ. This method has helped increase engagement and clarity, translating directly into more confident buying decisions.
SaloneSatellite: The Young and the Restless
This year, 700 designers under 35 from 36 countries gather at SaloneSatellite. The theme: "New Craft: New World", urging a reevaluation of how tradition, tech, and human creativity can coexist. This platform is a melting pot of design DNA—a glimpse into the future through the eyes of those who will shape it.
This area is often the most chaotic, but also the most electric. Some of our best design hires came from conversations that began at SaloneSatellite. It’s not just a recruitment pool. It’s a think tank of risk-takers. These young creatives are asking the hard questions—about materials, manufacturing, and meaning. And they’re not afraid to experiment.
What This Means for Buyers and Sourcing Teams
So, why should all this matter to you—the buyer for a German retail chain, the sourcing manager at a Dutch platform, or the furniture consultant looking to impress your next hotel client?
Because Milan doesn’t just influence styles. It reshapes standards.
Retailers must now align product storytelling with customer values: sustainability, wellness, identity.
Wholesalers should look at modular systems and compact SKUs for leaner logistics.
E-commerce platforms can gather endless content—lifestyle photography, product narratives, even short films—to elevate product pages.
Interior architects and project managers should take note of experiential design trends and how they inform user-centered public and commercial spaces.
At ASKT, we’re responding by enhancing our custom prototyping speed (samples in 10 days), doubling down on eco-certifications, and launching a storytelling content package for each new collection. Think: fabric origin stories, design inspirations, and care instructions—all optimized for platforms like Otto, Wayfair, and Amazon.
Salone as an Ecosystem
This year, the show partners with Milan’s opera house, La Scala. The opening night concert, Eve: Chairs, Objects, Opera, curated by Robert Wilson, features actual chairs from his stage history. It's poetic. Chairs not as props—but protagonists. This blend of fine art and industrial design underscores the importance of context and cultural resonance in everyday objects.
Throughout Milan, urban installations like Franco Albini's metro handrails and Norman Foster's bus stops are reminders that design is everywhere. Meanwhile, 100+ showrooms open their doors to the public via Fuorisalone.it, engaging students, tourists, and professionals in one inclusive citywide conversation.
This is the future: design as dialogue, not monologue. It’s no longer about broadcasting aesthetics—it’s about inviting collaboration, questioning assumptions, and refining the shared spaces of life.
Final Reflections: From Milan to Your Showroom
After each Salone, I sit with my team and ask: "What did we feel? What did we learn? What do we change?"
This year, here’s my takeaway:
We are no longer just building furniture. We are building context. Every curve, every cushion, every coating must answer: Who is this for? How does it fit their life? And what story does it tell?
Salone del Mobile 2025 doesn’t just show us the future. It asks us to participate in creating it. It reminds us that design isn’t finished when the chair leaves the factory. It’s only beginning—when it enters someone’s home, restaurant, studio, or café.
If you're attending, let’s meet. If not, reach out. I’m happy to share highlights, insights, and connections.
Together, let’s make design that matters.
Sunbin Qi
CEO of ASKT Furniture
📱 WhatsApp: +86 18912605997
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