When a piece of curtain fabric is placed in a showroom, its unit price can triple; when it is shown in a livestream, orders may come from thousands of kilometers away. The 18th Keqiao China Light and Textile City Curtain and Fabric Exhibition, held in August 2026, revealed a deep shift in the soft furnishing industry: online viewers far outnumbered offline visitors, and traditional fabric-stacking booths were almost absent.
From Selling Fabric to Crafting Scenes
The most visible signal was the upgrade of exhibition halls. Immersive whole-home reality displays became standard, with modern minimalist, gentle French, retro vintage, and light neo-Chinese style spaces neatly arranged, allowing buyers and designers to see actual effects. Brands like Orange Impression abandoned single-product displays, focusing on whole-home ambiance. Their representative stated that the industry has left the low-price era of selling fabric by volume; competition now centers on aesthetic ability, styling capability, and spatial creation.
For buyers, the selection logic must change. Instead of comparing fabric prices, they now evaluate scenes and solutions. Curtains are no longer just shading fabric but core soft furnishing items that determine home quality and mood. Factories also need to adjust: providing fabric swatches is insufficient; offering styling proposals and space renderings is key to entering buyers' consideration sets.
The Logic of Style and Fabric Evolution
Terminal aesthetics are moving away from a single internet-famous style toward a diversified pattern of minimalist base, personalized accents, and rising national style. Dopamine bright colors, French retro, and vintage texture styles remain popular, with young consumers preferring niche, textured, and non-duplicative options. Light neo-Chinese style emerged as the biggest dark horse, represented by brands like Caramel Road, using light mist gray, milk coffee, and off-white low-saturation bases, paired with simplified oriental lines and delicate embroidery, reducing heaviness and enhancing transparency—suitable for modern large flats and improved housing.
Fabric iteration is equally obvious. Chenille and high-density precision fabrics remain mainstream, but yarns are finer and softer, with a natural soft gloss; gram weight has increased, and drape is straight, fitting large floor-to-ceiling windows. Natural eco-friendly fabrics are rising in popularity, with cotton-linen blends and Tencel textures favored; no odor, high color fastness, and biodegradability have become hard requirements. Window dressing categories are also upgrading: thickened sheer fabrics that transmit light but not view, and textured sheers are now standard, turning sheer curtains from supporting roles to atmosphere protagonists. High-shade, sun-resistant, permanently shaped functional ready-made curtains are selling well, with blinds, honeycomb shades, and custom-shaped window dressings expanding. Whole-home window dressing integration has become a new profit direction for stores.
For downstream buyers, this iteration means clearer product tiers: volume products compete on price but squeeze margins; differentiated products compete on design and function, commanding higher premiums. Factories must invest in yarn, gram weight, and eco-certifications to enter mid-to-high-end channels.
The Dual Transformation of Originality and Channels
Under intense stock competition, the space for low-price involution is shrinking, and original design has become the industry's core barrier. At the fair, self-developed patterns, original texture techniques, and exclusive colorways were more favored, while blindly copied and homogeneous products are being phased out. The industry is shifting from scale and price competition to design, quality, and innovation.
Channel models are also fully reformed. Traditional passive waiting is ineffective. Short-video seeding, livestream cloud exhibitions for online traffic, combined with offline real-scene experience for accurate transactions, have become standard operating models for soft furnishing stores and source factories. The fair simultaneously launched cloud exhibitions, with online viewers far exceeding offline visitors; customers select products online and negotiate orders offline, fully connecting the omni-channel chain. 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 and also visit the Beilian physical market to connect with factory orders. With overseas visitors continuously arriving, domestic fabric brands are accelerating their global expansion, broadening the industry's market map.