November/December 2025

Canadian Interiors November-December 2025

Issue Focus: Design That Glows: Spaces Where Wellness Shows It Off

SPOTLIGHT: BEAUTY

The Face Institute / Noir Medical Aesthetics, Calgary / Atelier 1618, Quebec City

The design firms behind three new medico-aesthetic clinics take their own unique approaches that reject the sterile aesthetic of traditional clinics, opting instead for warmth and refinement. Wood, curves, and layered textures set a welcoming tone, while partitions balance privacy with light, creating environments that prioritizes comfort, sophistication, and a human-centered experience.

SPOTLIGHT: WELLNESS

Swish Oral Care, Calgary / Cross Cancer Institute, Edmonton

Recent research shows that wellness real estate has been one of the fastest growing markets in a $6.3 trillion global wellness industry. Two new wellness spaces in Alberta use soft curves, natural materials, and biophilic details to shift the atmosphere from clinical to restorative. Natural light, wood, and greenery foster calm, while wellness-focused amenities create environments that support an elevated sense healing.

SPOTLIGHT: SHOWROOMS

Cosentino, Toronto / Montauk Sofa, Toronto / Maison Territo, Montréal

Accounting for 15 per cent of the world’s furniture market, the high-end furniture market is a strategic and dynamic driver within the global interiors industry, with North America the largest market, largely due to its concentration of affluent consumers in growing urban centres such as Toronto and Montreal. In this piece we see three leading brands combine strong distribution with new monobrand or branded spaces, reflecting their dual strategy of global reach and premium positioning.

ASSOCIATION FOCUS

In this issue of IDC Dimensions, Vesna Plazacic explores how interior design education is embracing AI not as a disruptor, but as a catalyst for more human-centered practice. Across programs and industry voices, the message is clear: automation can accelerate workflows and spark ideation, but creativity, empathy, and critical discernment remain the designer’s edge. Schools are equipping students to wield AI strategically, leveraging machine intelligence for efficiency while doubling down on originality, intention, and deeply human design thinking.

SHOW COVERAGE: Feria Hábitat 2025, Valencia

The yearly Spanish design hub unites global furniture, lighting, textiles, and contract design with immersive installations, sustainable materials, and hotel-focused interiors, driving innovation and business for interior design professionals.

SHOW COVERAGE: HOST 2025, Milan

At Host 2025 in Milan, professionals were exposed to design-led hospitality innovations, with contract furnishings, tableware, and technology alongside artisan baking, coffee, and gelato, merging aesthetics, function, and sustainability across immersive interior experiences.

Editor’s Notes: Wellness Is the Measure

 Once associated with yoga studios, fitness chains and destination spas, wellness has moved from lifestyle trend to market imperative and is reshaping real estate development worldwide. At the intersection of health, design, and economics lies a sector that is rapidly outpacing traditional construction growth: wellness real estate. Globally valued at $584 billion in 2024, it is projected to surpass $1.1 trillion by 2029, expanding at nearly four times the pace of the overall building industry, according to The Global Wellness Institute. While the United States still dominates global wellness real estate, Canada’s trajectory is remarkable, growing from $6 billion in 2019 to $16 billion in 2024, outpacing North America overall.

For interior designers, the implications are profound. From retail clinics to urban spas, wellness environments are becoming critical testing grounds for ideas about sensory experience, material health, and community building. Early iterations of wellness real estate often relied on high-end amenities like Himalayan salt rooms, cryotherapy chambers or lavish hydrotherapy suites. While these remain hallmarks of flagship spas and resorts, the market has matured into something more expansive, where interiors are expected to simultaneously signal credibility and trust while delivering experiences.

Project examples in this issue of Canadian Interiors illustrate the transition. In Ontario and Alberta, the rapid expansion of boutique wellness clinics has created demand for interiors that merge hospitality design cues such as soft lighting, natural materials and lounge-style waiting areas with clinical functionality. These spaces are less about sterile efficiency and more about cultivating sensory calm. One of the most significant shifts in wellness real estate is the move from siloed functions to integrated environments. Wellness is no longer confined to gyms or spas; it is becoming embedded across housing, work, retail, and hospitality. For interior designers, this means that retail wellness spaces must do more than just draw in clients with posh material palettes and product positioning but also operate in dialogue with their surrounding neighbourhoods, underscoring the shift from individual to collective experiences and wellness not as a decorative afterthought but as a deliberate health outcome.

Across the projects featured in this issue, this shift can be seen in how each environment rejects clinical sterility in favour of tactile warmth and organic forms that encourage emotional ease. Natural materials anchor spaces in biophilic principles, while circadian lighting and acoustic control fine-tune the body’s response. Reception zones feel more like cafés, lounges, or galleries than waiting rooms, using furniture arrangements and multifunctional layouts to foster social connection and a sense of belonging. Intuitive wayfinding eases cognitive load, while durable, cleanable finishes quietly meet regulatory demands without compromising atmosphere. Whether it’s a meditation room at the heart of a dermatology clinic or a staff wellness retreat shaped by user input, these designs choreograph sensory experience to reduce stress, support routine care, and reframe medical visits as acts of self-care. Wellness here operates as infrastructure: spatial, material, and social.

The next phase of wellness real estate will see design expand along several axes. First, affordability: as the sector matures, wellness features must extend beyond luxury spas into accessible clinics and community health hubs. Next will be climate adaptation: Canadian developers are beginning to integrate resilience strategies such as wildfire-resistant materials, passive cooling and renewable microgrids into wellness projects, underscoring the link between planetary and human health. For interior designers, these shifts demand fluency not only in aesthetics but also in science and sociology. Materials must be vetted for chemical safety; lighting calibrated to circadian rhythms; acoustics shaped for both privacy and connection.

Wellness real estate is not a passing trend. It is a structural redefinition of how buildings and interiors create value. In Canada, the growth of this sector underscores both market demand and cultural appetite for environments that support well-being. For interior designers, retail wellness environments such as spas and clinics offer the most immediate laboratories for this transformation. They demand interiors that are multisensory yet restrained, technologically advanced yet deeply human. As the market races toward $1.1 trillion globally, wellness real estate challenges designers to rethink not just what makes a space beautiful, but what makes it healthy and, increasingly, what makes it essential.