When the 18th Keqiao China Textile City Curtain & Fabric Exhibition concluded, the industry saw more than an ordinary trade show—it witnessed a restructuring of value in the soft furnishings chain. Changes in showroom formats, style preferences, fabric logic, and channel models all point to one conclusion: curtains are no longer mere light-blocking fabrics but shapers of spatial mood.
Event Background
The most visible shift at this edition was in the booths themselves. Traditional displays piled with fabric swatches have virtually disappeared, replaced by immersive full-room experiential spaces. Modern minimalism, gentle French style, retro vintage, and light neo-Chinese aesthetics were fully staged, allowing buyers and designers to see how curtains look in real home settings.
This transition from "selling fabric" to "creating scenes" reflects a change in competitive dimensions. Exhibitors like Orange Impression no longer show single products but focus on whole-home ambiance. Their representatives stated that the soft furnishings industry has moved beyond the low-price era of selling by volume; the core competition now lies in aesthetic ability, coordination skills, and space-shaping capability.
For buyers, this means the product selection logic must upgrade simultaneously. The old approach of checking patterns, comparing weights, and pressing prices is fading. The ability to offer complete spatial solutions has become the new order divider. Suppliers stuck in single-product thinking will find it increasingly hard to enter mainstream channels.
Industry Impact
Changes in style are equally dramatic. End-consumer aesthetics have broken free from a single internet-famous trend. Dopamine bright colors, French retro, and vintage texture styles remain popular, with younger consumers favoring niche, textured, and unique options. The biggest surprise is lightweight neo-Chinese style—unlike the heavy, intricate traditional designs of previous years, the 2026 version uses soft low-saturation bases like mist gray, milk coffee, and rice white, paired with minimalist oriental lines and delicate embroidery, reducing heaviness and enhancing transparency.
This style shift is not accidental. It precisely meets the pain points of improved housing and high-end decoration: wanting oriental charm while remaining modern and adaptable. Leading factories like Caramilu have made this their focus, meaning supply chains—from sampling to stocking to production scheduling—will tilt accordingly. Retailers clinging to cream or minimalist styles risk missing the most certain growth category of the second half.
Fabric evolution is equally noteworthy. Chenille and high-precision fabrics remain mainstream, but yarns are finer and softer, with a natural sheen; higher gram weights provide better drape, suited for large floor-to-ceiling windows. Natural eco-friendly materials are surging—cotton-linen blends and Tencel textures are favored, with no odor, high colorfastness, and biodegradability becoming hard requirements. Meanwhile, sheer fabrics that are translucent but not see-through—like thickened illusion sheers and textured sheers—have risen from supporting roles to protagonists. Functional ready-made curtains with high blackout, UV resistance, and permanent shaping are expanding, alongside blinds, honeycomb shades, and custom-shaped window treatments. Whole-home window covering integration is becoming a new profit point for stores.
For factories, the lesson is clear: the era of simply stacking specifications is over. Fabrics must not only look good but also be functional and eco-friendly, and support spatial narratives. Suppliers who differentiate through texture, drape, and functionality will gain stronger pricing power.
On the channel front, the traditional wait-for-customers model is obsolete. Short-video seeding, live-stream cloud exhibitions for online traffic, combined with offline real-scene experience for precise closing, have become standard practice for soft furnishing stores and factories. This fair simultaneously launched cloud exhibitions, with online visits far exceeding offline footfall. Buyers select products online and place orders offline after physical checks, fully integrating the omnichannel loop. Keqiao's "exhibition-trade integration" advantage continues to amplify, extending the short-term fair into a year-round source market. Buyers can capture annual trends at the fair and then visit the Beilian physical market to connect with factory orders, shortening the supply chain. With overseas buyers visiting steadily, domestic brands are accelerating their global expansion, broadening the industry's footprint.