Please Do, Please Don’t

* No fussy florals, no mixing of primary colors. We like fabrics that are industrial in nature yet soft . . . like felt.

--Mitchell Gold, furniture manufacturer

* Out: bright, in-your-face “punch” colors, like orange. In: the softer mid-tone palette medium blue, lichen green and metallic grays like pewter and titanium.

--Nancy Burns, Color Marketing Group

* Beige is out for 2000. Faux anything is over.

--Mario Buatta, decorator

* Kitchen gardens. . . . We are adding more than 40 varieties of lettuce to our site next spring.

--Doug Jimerson, editor in chief, Garden.com

* Color is emerging. Now design follows on the heels of fashion in one nanosecond. Beaded fringes on a hemline this morning, beaded fringes on a lampshade tonight.

--Larry Laslo, furniture designer

* There’s a lot of talk of brown for next fall. And brown paired with gray.

--Matt Murphy, Target stores

* In: simplicity.

Out: anything that wastes your time. Anyone who arbitrarily dictates your decorating.

--Donna Warner, Metropolitan Home

* Shabby chic is gone. It wasn’t especially comfortable; it was just sloppy.

--Victor Shargai, interior designer

* Feng shui will be major. The little fountains. Home altars. Maybe other Asian kinds of things that put you in that de-stressed frame of mind.

--Irma Zandl, trends researcher

* Color is coming. Really dark wood. Shabby chic is dated. Things are trimmer, more fitted, more tailored.

--Louis O. Gropp, editor in chief, House Beautiful

* ‘50s kitsch like poodles, flamingos and boomerangs,

and all that pink and turquoise, are over.

--Travis Smith, Good Eye 20th Century Interiors

* In: patina.

--Beth Aberg, Random Harvest stores

* Candles are really hot. We like scents that evoke memories and make you feel comfortable.

--Patti Upton, Aromatique

* Out: fussiness and clutter. In: high-tech integrated with comfortable teddy bear-like fabrics--chenilles, mohair, velvet, suedes.

--Jose Solis Betancourt, interior designer

* Out: the excessiveness of pseudo-opulence and pseudo-grandeur. In: responding to trends only if they mean something to you.

--Albert Hadley, interior designer

* We like dark woods, handcrafted furniture, bronze lighting.

--Celia Tejada, Pottery Barn

* Out: Still marbleizing columns in this day and age? You’d better catch up. People are driving cars that talk, wearing clothes made of high-tech fabric and running their homes by satellite. They don’t want to open the front door and see the 18th century.

--David Mitchell, interior designer

* Genetic engineering and biotechnology will become a real hot potato. . .and it won’t be the thing of the future.

--Bruce Butterfield, National Gardening Assn.

* Shine has gone away. High-gloss looks have changed to soft limestone, concrete and brushed aluminum effects for the counter top. . . . I would have said avocado green and harvest gold were out, but after Austin Powers, a younger generation thinks it’s cool.

--Renee Hytry, Formica Corp.

* In: tropical plants. Out: junipers and other conifers.

--Wendy Proud, Monrovia nurseries

* Out: Postmodernism. In: Modernism.

--Architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen