After a decade-long "explosion" of fancy home decoration, more and more people are opting for simplicity, avoiding complicated, hard-to-care-for decor. People have realized the freshness of a design and its color scheme keeps two to three years at best. By adopting minimalism, they can redecorate their home when, and for as long as, they feel like it.

    A designer with a prominent home decoration company cited some examples. In the past, many customers demanded the home entertainment systems be backgrounded with elaborate wall treatments. Now most customers want simple television background walls, some even say that a layer of wallpaper is enough. Most families still want a mark of individuality to avoid similarities with others. In building materials, all customers demand quality – "green" or pollution-free – and economy. "Design concepts must be diversified, and combine different elements according to customers' requirements, to convey a sense of the new and unique."

    Many people agree that home decoration is more demanding than in the past, for both interior design companies and their customers. "One of the important reasons is that people are paying closer attention to personalization," said an expert with the Environmental Protection Committee of the Beijing Municipal Construction Decoration Association. Everyone expects their style and taste to be different from what's out there. This has increased the difficulty of satisfying customers. To ensure that critical difference, many people have to spend more time visiting building material markets, hunting down ideal materials and fixtures.

    To balance this obsession with unique appearances, an "intelligent lifestyle" is being popularized, such as the so-called "smart house" features of central air-conditioning, remote-controlled doors and windows, touch-sensor kitchens, thermostated bathrooms, and massage bathtubs. Life's needs are answered by every article and feature of the home. The demands for creature comforts are growing, as proper companions to aesthetically driven features and values.

    People have always enjoyed the pleasure of beautifying the home, and cotton on to new ways of doing it, such as DIY, group purchases, and even placing orders for building materials on the Internet.

    From the characterless bunkers of old, to an eclectic panorama of styles, and finally a return to near-austerity, changing tastes seem to work in a cycle. Chinese people have had quite a spin on the interior decoration train lately.