When the 18th Keqiao Curtain Fabric Exhibition concluded, a widely circulated remark in the industry was: a curtain is no longer just a piece of fabric, but the emotional switch of an entire space. The data and trends released at the fair indicate that the competitive dimensions of the soft furnishing market in the second half of 2026 have been completely rewritten—price wars have exited, and aesthetic and spatial curation have become the new tickets to entry.
Scene-based showrooms become standard, fabric-selling logic fails
The most visible change at this fair was not a new product, but the collective upgrade of exhibition hall formats. Traditional fabric-stacking booths have almost disappeared, replaced by full-home real-scene spaces in styles such as modern minimalism, French tenderness, retro vintage, and light neo-Chinese. This means buyers are no longer ordering a piece of fabric; they are seeing how the curtain actually looks in a real home setting.
The soft furnishing brand Orange Impression showcased a full-home ambiance matching approach. Its head stated that the industry has long left the era of selling by fabric volume; the core of competition now lies in aesthetic ability, matching capability, and spatial shaping. For sourcing parties, this means selection standards must shift from weight and composition to overall style compatibility. For factories, pure fabric production is no longer sufficient—they must provide spatial solutions.
Light Chinese style breaks out, fabrics move toward texture and functionality
At the style level, the most prominent signal of this fair was the comprehensive breakout of lightweight neo-Chinese design. Unlike the heavy and complex traditional Chinese style of previous years, the 2026 version uses low-saturation bases like mist gray, milk coffee, and off-white, paired with minimalist oriental lines and delicate embroidery, reducing heaviness and enhancing transparency, perfectly matching the needs of modern large flats and improved residences. Brands like Kalailu have made it their main direction, reflecting young consumers' strong preference for personalized, non-colliding soft furnishing solutions.
Fabric technology has also seen a quality upgrade. Chenille and high-precision fabrics remain mainstream, but yarns are finer, weights higher, and drape better, catering to large floor-to-ceiling windows. Meanwhile, natural eco-friendly materials like cotton-linen blends and Tencel textures are surging in popularity. No odor, high colorfastness, and biodegradability have become hard purchasing criteria. Functional ready-made curtains—high shading, sun-resistant, permanently shaped—continue to sell well. Blinds, honeycomb shades, and custom-shaped window treatments are expanding, making integrated full-home window coverings a new profit direction for stores.
Original design as a barrier, omnichannel operations reshape channels
Against fierce stock competition, the space for low-price involution is shrinking. This fair clearly showed that self-developed patterns, original texture techniques, and exclusive colorways are preferred by buyers, while homogeneous replicas are being phased out. The industry is shifting from scale and low price to design, quality, and innovation. Originality has become the core competitive barrier.
Channel models are also undergoing fundamental change. The traditional wait-for-customers approach is no longer viable. Short-video seeding, live-streaming cloud exhibitions for online traffic, combined with offline real-scene experiences for precise closing, have become standard operation for soft furnishing stores and source factories. This fair simultaneously launched cloud and live broadcasts, with online viewership far exceeding offline footfall. Buyers select products online and negotiate orders offline, opening up the entire chain. For small and medium factories, this means they must build online content capabilities or lose a critical traffic gateway.
The advantage of Keqiao's 'exhibition-trade integration' continues to amplify, extending short-term fairs into year-round source markets. Buyers can catch annual trends at the fair and then visit the Beilian physical market to connect with factory source orders, significantly shortening the supply-demand chain. With overseas buyers visiting continuously, domestic fabric brands are accelerating their global expansion, and the market map of the curtain industry is broadening.