Thank you all for participating in Blog Madness 2018 to help us make our (third) annual Plaster & Disaster Blogging Trend Predictions! It was a bold experiment in sports puns and a different kind of “bracket” for a DIY blog, but your votes and comments made all the time we spent compiling collages totally worth it. (And in case you missed the fun, you can follow along from the 32 trend contenders, to the sweet sixteen, the elite eight, the final four, and the championship match.)

We were pretty prescient in 2016 and 2017, hence the pressure to complete the hat trick here in 2018 (now that we’re onto the sports puns, we can’t stop). We know you’re all just on the edge of your seats waiting for the reveal of your champion…

…the winner of the battle-of-the-decor-giants that was Peru vs. Natural Textures…

…the ultimate 2018 trend….

That’s right, you picked Natural Textures to be the ultimate trend out of the 32 ideas we put before you!

Were we surprised that this won? Yes, we were — natural textures have unquestionably been building a strong foundation for years, but when we created the bracket we weren’t sure if it was flashy enough to become the dominate trend of the year. If we’re being honest, we even briefly contemplated that the voting had been led astray by Russian trolls. But then we reminded ourselves that the internet is never wrong, and so while we were busy being dazzled by disco balls and llamas, you all were seeing right through the noise and speaking truth to power. (Or you just really like sisal rugs and are sick of the time it takes to paint furniture.)

Your 2018 Trend Predictions

Beyond just having an ultimate champion, you all also picked top trends in each of our four categories: Surfaces, Decor, Blogging, and Embellishments.  Here is what you selected as the biggest trends of 2018:

Ultimate 2018 Trend Winner & Top Surface Trend: Natural Textures

What more is there to say about natural textures? No seriously, this is our sixth post in the last 10 days where we’ve had to come up with something new to say about what is inherently a fairly neutral design aesthetic, and we’ve run out of adjectives and pithy wordplay. Jute, raw wood, stones, linen…you get it. And apparently you love it.  And this calm trend is going to be big in 2018.

Top 2018 Decor Trend: Peruvian Textiles, Decor, Tassels… and Llamas

The runner up to the top trend of 2018 and the overall winner in the decor division is the colorful and whimsical category of “Peru.” From its first significant victory in the “cultural appropriation” match-up against dream catchers, Peru went up against some of the fiercest competitors in the bracket — Colorful appliances! Buffalo! Bloggers buying vacation homes! — and came out victorious each time. Maybe because it’s such a broad category that it’s like a little blogger ecosystem within itself?  Seriously, it comes with its own patterns (bloggers love cool patterns), personality-filled animal (bloggers love putting animals on things), and easily DIYed yarn concoction (bloggers love making stuff out of yarn).  These elements will be mixed and matched everywhere in 2018!

Top 2018 Blogging Trend: Bloggers Buying Vacation Homes

Blogging itself is an ever-changing medium, and we predicted some exciting developments in the industry in 2018. Not surprisingly, the one that took home the gold in this division was the proliferation of vacation homes that seems to have swept the blogosphere in the last few months. 2018 will undoubtedly be full of lots of second-home renovation content.

Here are Plaster & Disaster we’re still overwhelmed just trying to fix up our first houses and plus the housing market in Boston is way too expensive to make second homes practical for either of us (I recently saw a burned down house for sale for $600,000 a few miles away from us…I am not exaggerating) — so probably the closest we’re going to get to this trend is our tiny fixer upper.

Top 2018 Embellishments Trend: Bone Inlay

And lastly, you all picked bone inlay as the top embellishment of 2018. It’s elegant, it’s ornate, probably no animals were injured in making it…what’s not to love? Even though we can’t all afford large inlay furniture, we foresee small pieces and DIY versions popping up all over the design world this year.  Seriously, bloggers love a trend that can be accomplished with a stencil.

Our Bonus Trend Predictions

You all made some good bets. But we have a history of always making six predictions for the coming year and you only gave us a top four (because of the game structure that we ourselves designed…). Plus, we were sad to see a few of our extremely prescient predictions fall earlier than we think they should have. Here are two bonus predictions that will take 2018 by storm, whether you agree with us or not:

Disco Balls are the New Balloon, and Thus the New Donut

That’s right, we’re doing it. If you thought we were bold last year in correctly predicting that balloons would take the spot of 2016’s “trendiest round object,” the donut, you must be shocked that we’d go for it again this year.  But that’s how confident we are. Bloggers are really into whimsical spheres, but we are also fickle…. I mean, you can’t throw a donut-themed party two years in a row, and I bet that after you nearly fainted blowing up balloons to make an impractical thanksgiving tablescape last year, you’re ready for something new once again.

Enter the disco ball. It’s round. It’s useless.  It’s retro. It doesn’t go stale or deflate throughout the day. It’s perfect!

We’re students of the market, and we can tell a trend is serious business when it starts appearing on blogs in the form of wreaths, planters, headbands, costumes…. and pineapples.

No More Metal… Just Make It Pink

We usually make a metal finish prediction, but we’ve decided that isn’t necessary for 2018. Why? Bloggers won’t be using metal in 2018. In any instance where we would have used metal, we’re just going to make it pink instead.

And when we do have to use metal, we’re going to (a) make it a very pink metal; or (b) put it near pink stuff so the pink sort of reflects in it and makes it look pink.

That’s right, pink is our prediction of the year for both metal and color and just about everything else. Stake in the ground: we will be able to make you a collage of pink disco balls by the end of the year. You can take that promise to the bank.

Thanks everyone for playing along, and we look forward to recovering from all this collage-making for 11 months before we’re back to report on the accuracy of these here predictions!

It’s the big day! You started with thirty two potential trend contenders, reduced them to a sweet sixteen, an elite eight, and then a final four.  Now you’ve voted again and narrowed it down to two, going head-to-head in a championship match for total dominance of the blogosphere in 2018.

So who is it?

That’s right, we have Peruvian textiles and decor facing off against natural textures, a true match for history books.

It wasn’t a surprise to see natural textures prevail in the match-up of Embellishments vs. Surfaces.  While embellishments have a bit of an advantage given how much bloggers like adding stuff to other stuff, Bone Inlay had really gone as far as it could.  As much as we love it as our main 2018 embellishment trend its such a specific look that it can’t viably play in the championship match.  So it was confirming to see natural textures totally dominate in the polls.

A much more tenuous victory was had by Peru as it triumphed over the trend of bloggers all buying vacation homes to redecorate by the thinnest of margins.  We hear you: both were just such incredibly prescient predictions on our part that you had trouble choosing.  It’s no doubt that bloggers will buy and redecorate vacation homes in 2018… but it seems that they are also very likely to redecorate them with Peruvian textiles and a lot of llamas and tassels.

The Championship Match: Peru vs. Natural Textures

So now it is all down to this, and the fate of the world 2018 blogger trends rests in your hands.  Weigh carefully, for what you pick today you’ll have to see in your pinterest feed for 11.5 more months.

We’ve said all we can say about these trend titans.  You know your choices.  You know you have bright colors, strong patterns, a cultured vibe, and whimsical tassels on one hand.  You also know all about the raw wood edges, calming stones, cozy wool rugs, and subtle implication that you know yoga on the other.  You know that woodland creatures are “out” and the adorable, personality-filled llama is quickly rising to star status in top-decor-animal.  You also know that swapping in a jute rug is totally the cheapest way to update a previously chevron-floored room.

There’s nothing more to say.  You must decide.  Who will you choose?

Thank you for participating in this week of madness and celebrating our 3rd blog anniversary with us!  We’re back to our regular schedule next week, and will be revealing the ULTIMATE 2018 TREND WINNER and summarizing our 3rd Annual Blogging Trend Predictions on Wednesday.

Thanks for reading Plaster & Disaster!  We have such a blast with this blog, and that’s because all of you read, participate, comment, opine, and vote.  Thank you!