What We’re Looking Forward to at Design Chicago 2026

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Design Chicago is coming back to THE MART September 23rd and 24th with two days of presentations, CEUs, workshops, showroom events, and product introductions across floors 1, 6, and 14. DesignDash will be there this year, too. Our founders Laura Umansky and Melissa Grove will host several events during the conference, including a Thursday morning hiring workshop for interior design firm owners.

Our schedule is naturally weighted toward the business side of design because that is a large part of what we cover at DesignDash. Hiring, leadership, marketing, product development, editorial, and technology all affect how firms operate day to day as well as how they grow over time. But we don’t have tunnel vision! We will also be making time for materials, design history, and a few presentations that ask intriguing questions about taste and creative identity.

We’ve included a few photos from our last visits to Design Chicago, where we hosted a unique DesignDash Mastermind. For similar experiences, join the DesignDash Community below!

DesignDash Will Talk About Hiring, Per Usual

Laura and Melissa will lead Hiring Workshop w/Design Dash Thursday morning at the Gaggenau, Thermador, Bosch Experience & Design Center. This workshop focuses on identifying the work only the owner should do, determining your Best Focus, and hiring around the responsibilities that someone else can take over.

You can know you need help without knowing what kind of help you need. A project manager, procurement specialist, junior designer, operations hire, and senior designer solve different problems. Laura and Melissa will work through the owner’s role first so the next hire is based on the actual work of the firm rather than a general sense that everyone is too busy.

We Always Recommend that You Start With the Owner’s Role

We call this being the “bottleneck” in your own business. If every approval, client decision, design revision, and internal question still goes through you, the structure is still centered on you. Another employee doesn’t automatically change that.

Best Focus separates the responsibilities that depend on your specific abilities from the work another person can handle. Once those categories are clear, it is easier to define a role, write a job description, and decide what level of experience the firm needs next.

And if you haven’t tried our “Focus and Flex” Challenge before, we encourage you to sign up below! It’s free, engaging, and lots of fun.

Photography and Editorial Programming

Wednesday morning’s Beyond the Image: The Strategic Value of Photography brings together a photographer, interior designer, architect, and general contractor. They’ll discuss visual direction, shoot preparation, the images each project partner needs, budgets, cost sharing, licensing, usage rights, credits, and publication requirements.

As design firms, we use our project photography for editorial submissions, awards, websites, social media, marketing, and new business. The same set of images might be used by several project partners, so licensing and cost sharing are part of the planning. Designers who spend heavily on photography need to know what they’re buying and where those images can be used.

What Editors Are Looking for Now

Later Wednesday, The Quarterly Edit: The Editors’ Insider Issue brings together Amy Sneider of aspire design and home, Elizabeth Sweet of WSJ Off Duty and Dwell, Emma Bazilian of FREDERIC, Krissa Rossbund of Traditional Home, and Kate Templin and Kimberly Writt of Jo Communications. The panel is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at Marshall’s Landing Staircase.

The session is specifically about the current media landscape: fewer editorial opportunities, creator journalists, changing audience habits, and long-term relationships with editors. Designers now publish their own work across several channels, but national editorial still plays a different role. We want to hear what editors are looking for now, what makes a project worth publishing, and how firms should think about press when the number of traditional editorial slots is smaller.

If your goal is to get published within the next year, we highly recommend that you check out this interview with Andrea Lillo, the Executive Editor of Designers Today. She also joined our podcast a few months ago; you can watch that below!

Family Businesses and Design Leadership

Patrick Frey and his sons Vincent and Pierre will present To Create is to Dare: The Living Story of Maison Pierre Frey Wednesday morning. The presentation celebrates the opening of Maison Pierre Frey’s new Chicago showroom and looks at the company across three generations.

Maison Pierre Frey is an independent family-owned design house, and all three generations will discuss its history, creativity, and direction together. Designers who own firms will probably listen to this differently than someone who is only interested in textiles. A creative company has to make decisions about what it keeps, what it changes, and how much authority the next generation has.

BOSS LADY 10 Looks at Family Firms From the Leadership Side

Thursday afternoon, BOSS LADY 10: The Family Business of Design brings together two family-run design businesses. Deborah Costa and Kristine Renee of Design Alchemy will join Alisha Serras and Niki Serras of Scavolini Store Chicago. Daniele Busca will moderate.

The session will focus on leadership, legacy, creative vision, entrepreneurship, and the influence of a new generation inside an established business. It should be relevant to firms where family members already work together and to founders who are thinking about succession well before they plan to retire.

Product Development Depends on the Brand Relationship

Wednesday afternoon, Kendall Wilkinson and Iatesta Studio owner and creative director Matt Quinn will discuss their debut collection during Artisanal Design: The Making of an Iatesta Studio Collaboration. The published program focuses on how their professional relationship developed into a product collaboration and the creative direction behind the collection.

Designers who want to work in furniture or licensing need a manufacturer that can translate an idea into a product that can actually be produced. The program does not promise a discussion of licensing terms or the commercial structure of the partnership, so we won’t assume it will cover them. It does give designers a chance to hear how a designer-brand relationship developed before the collection was launched.

AI: Judgment and Workflow

Wednesday’s The Human Touch vs AI includes Jeffrey Bershad of Phillip Jeffries, Jill Cohen of LUXE Interiors + Design, Joan Craig of Craig & Co, and Tom Stringer of Tom Stringer Design Partners. The panel will discuss judgment, taste, trust, and emotional intelligence as design apps improve.

That framing is more relevant to residential designers than another image-generation demonstration. The designer’s job includes client judgment, material knowledge, project coordination, and responsibility for what is actually built. The panel is asking where human expertise fits as software produces more design options faster.

Thursday Moves to Workflow

Harnessing AI: Now What? follows last year’s “Why AI?” program. Chad Stark and other industry leaders will discuss how AI is changing design workflows and where firms are finding new applications for it.

The schedule does not list specific tools or case studies, so we’ll wait to hear what the speakers bring. We’re hoping for specifics about workflow because designers have had enough time to test AI inside real firms now. Which tasks save time, which require more review, and where the technology fits into client work are more interesting questions than whether designers should pay attention to AI at all.

Taste and Personal Perspective

Thursday afternoon’s Is Good Taste Killing Creativity? asks whether highly polished, curatorially correct interiors are starting to look too similar. The official description focuses on individual expression and an industry that often rewards familiar visual language.

It is a good question for designers who also need a recognizable portfolio. A firm needs enough consistency for clients to understand its point of view, but too much repetition can narrow the work. The panel is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at Assembled Works.

Young Huh and Noz Nozawa Will Discuss Personal Perspective

Earlier Thursday, Young Huh and Noz Nozawa will join Brizo Chicago Studio Lead Matt Nguyen for Perspectives in Design. They’ll discuss culture, craftsmanship, personal perspective, finding your voice, how they define luxury, and what they see next in design.

The two programs cover related questions without asking the same thing. Perspectives in Design focuses on how two designers define their own work, while Is Good Taste Killing Creativity? asks what happens when the industry rewards familiar work. Together, they should make a good pair for anyone thinking about how a firm develops a recognizable point of view without repeating itself.

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Aging in Place Is a Residential Design Issue

Wednesday afternoon’s Aging in Place: What Every Interior Designer Needs to Know includes Jessica Lagrange, Ross Padluck, Sarah Couture, and Tom Stringer. They’ll discuss design strategies that support clients as their needs change over time, with project examples, resources, and a take-home checklist.

The subject is practical. Circulation, bathrooms, lighting, stairs, flooring transitions, hardware, and furniture planning all affect whether a client can continue using a home comfortably. Many luxury residential projects are designed for clients who expect to stay in the house for years, so aging in place belongs in long-term planning even when it is not the main brief.

The Panel Will Include Specific Resources

The schedule says attendees will receive an aging-in-place design checklist and resource list. The session should give designers who understand the general principle more specific guidance for residential projects.

We also want to hear how the panel recommends introducing these decisions to clients. Some clients are already thinking about accessibility. Others are building or renovating a long-term home without considering how their physical needs might change.

There Are Several Hands-On Material Sessions

Design Chicago includes a Tai Ping and Edward Fields master class on hand-tufted and hand-knotted carpeting, a Schumacher block-printing workshop, a Scalamandré workshop on wallcovering, and STARK’s Woven Stories, where participants will work on pre-warped peg looms. Each session addresses how a material is made or specified, not just how it looks.

The rug master class covers fiber selection and construction. Schumacher will demonstrate hand block printing. Scalamandré will discuss its Made in the USA Quick Ship Wallcovering Program, and STARK’s workshop focuses on warp, weft, tension, color sequencing, and yarn weight.

Material Knowledge Still Affects Specification

Designers make decisions about construction, durability, maintenance, lead times, and installation every week. A full demonstration can clarify differences that are hard to understand from photography or a small sample.

We’re planning to make time for some of the workshops between the business sessions. There is enough technical programming this year that a designer could spend much of the two days focused on specification alone.

Design Chicago 2026 Details

Design Chicago takes place Wednesday, September 23 and Thursday, September 24, 2026, at THE MART in Chicago. Programming is spread across floors 1, 6, and 14 and includes presentations, CEUs, workshops, open houses, product introductions, and evening events.

DesignDash will be there throughout the conference. We’ll share the rest of Laura and Melissa’s schedule separately once those details are ready. Stay tuned! We can’t wait to see you there!

Written by the DesignDash Editorial Team
Our contributors include experienced designers, firm owners, design writers, and other industry professionals. If you’re interested in submitting your work or collaborating, please reach out to our Editor-in-Chief at editor@designdash.com.