The name is the biggest misconception. Brutalism does not come from the word brutal, but from the French béton brut – raw concrete, cast and left as it is, with the grain of the formwork and the builders’ handprints still visible on the surface. Le Corbusier used the expression for his own houses, and when British critic Reyner Banham wrote the essay that gave the movement its name in 1955, rawness was exactly what he meant, not harshness. Seventy years later, the style is back in interior design, albeit in a softer form that the industry calls soft brutalism. It is a style that makes unusually clear demands of art: a poster in a Brutalist room must be able to hang alone against a large, uninterrupted surface without disappearing. Here is the style’s history, its Swedish chapter, and the motifs that actually work.
Quick facts: Reyner Banham’s essay "The New Brutalism" was published in Architectural Review in December 1955, in issue 708 of volume 118. For its epigraph, he used Le Corbusier’s line about architecture being the art of creating moving relationships using raw materials. Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, completed in 1952, is generally considered the style’s founding building. Banham also identified two related movements as influences: Jean Dubuffet’s art brut and Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète from the 1940s.
From béton brut to Banham – how Brutalism got its name
Postwar Europe lacked everything except concrete. When Le Corbusier built his residential block in Marseille, he left the facade unplastered, unpainted, and unclad. The concrete was left just as it came out of the formwork, with the boards’ marks and variations in tone where the mix had varied. It was an economic decision that became an aesthetic program: the material should show what it is and how it came to be.
Banham captured the idea in his essay and linked it to two other postwar movements that did the same thing in other media. Dubuffet’s art brut championed painting outside the conventions of academia, while Schaeffer’s musique concrète made music from recorded everyday sounds instead of musical notation. All three shared a distrust of refinement. What was processed was dishonest.
That was also where the style’s moral charge lay. Brutalism was never just a surface, but a statement that the structure should be legible. Load-bearing elements should be visible, installations should not be hidden, and joints should not be concealed behind trim. This principle is called material honesty and remains at the heart of the style, long after concrete was joined by wood and textiles.
Anshelm, Edman, Nyberg and Celsing – Brutalism built in Sweden
Sweden embraced the style with force during the 1960s. Three architects from Lund are usually considered its foremost Swedish proponents: Klas Anshelm, Bengt Edman, and Bernt Nyberg. Their buildings have that characteristic combination of massive volume and unusually carefully handled details, which makes Swedish brutalism rarely feel as hard-edged as the British kind.
In Stockholm, Peter Celsing is the central figure. His Olaus Petri Church in Gärdet, inaugurated in 1959, is among the early Swedish examples of the pronounced style, and Kulturhuset at Sergels Torg, inaugurated in stages during the early 1970s, is probably the country's best-known brutalist building. Kulturhuset also shows what the style can do when it succeeds: a massive concrete frame meets a completely open glass facade, and the building is monumental and inviting at the same time.
Interest in the period has grown considerably in recent years. Tove Falk Olsson and Martin Rörby have documented the era in books about brutalist Stockholm and Sweden, and Kulturhuset Stadsteatern has held tours of Celsing's architecture in the building. It is a reassessment: buildings regarded as mistakes in the 1990s are now read as one of the 20th century's most consistent architectural ideas.
Criticism of the style has otherwise always followed the same line. Concrete ages poorly in the Nordic climate, surfaces become streaked with rain and soot, and the large volumes were perceived as unwelcoming at street level. Much of that is true, and some buildings from the 1960s and 1970s were demolished for precisely those reasons. But the criticism was directed at the execution, not the idea. When the same principles move into a home, they are no longer about facades meant to withstand the weather, but about letting the structure of a room show rather than covering it up. That is why the style works better indoors today than it ever did outdoors.
"Brutalism never hides how something is built - and that is precisely why it calls for art that doesn't pretend either."
Why 2026 in particular: soft brutalism, green brutalism, and the break with beige
The brutalism now seen in interior design media is not the brutalism of the 1960s. Two variations dominate. One is called soft brutalism and is based on pairing cold, cast concrete with warm wood, felted wool, and muted light. The recommendation that keeps coming up in trend reports is to use lamps between 2200 and 2700 kelvin, meaning distinctly warm light, because otherwise gray surfaces take on a blue cast and the room feels harsh.
The other is called green brutalism and is about breaking up the mass of concrete with greenery: climbing plants against a raw wall, large foliage in front of a closed surface, planters built into walls. Both variations respond to the same thing - the original style was difficult to live in, and the 2026 version prioritizes livability over orthodoxy.
The style’s growing popularity right now is tied to a broader move away from bright, neutral interiors. In 1stDibs’ survey ahead of 2026, designers identified maximalism, chocolate brown, and vintage as the strongest trends. The share working with antiques made before 1920 rose from 56 percent in 2024 to 63 percent, and 38 percent cited eclecticism as a leading approach. The year’s material palette is consistently described in terms of stone, clay, and sand, with matte, tactile surfaces. Brutalism fits into that landscape, but differs from its closest relative: industrial style takes its cues from the factory and the brick loft, while brutalism takes its cues from the architect’s drafting table and the cast volume.
Brutalism room by room - from the hallway’s grayscale to the bedroom’s concrete tones
The hallway is the style’s natural starting point, since it often already has the enclosed character that brutalism thrives on. A single large architectural image in grayscale on the short wall sets the tone for the entire home. Here, black-and-white posters work better than anything else, ideally in a format larger than the room first seems able to accommodate.
In the living room, the task is different. A large, uninterrupted area behind the sofa can accommodate either one monumental piece or a strict grid hanging of three to six equally sized frames, evenly spaced. Don’t mix the two approaches. Brutalism is built on repetition and rhythm, and the irregular gallery wall belongs to a different aesthetic.
The bedroom softens the style. Here, concrete tones work best alongside warm gray textiles and art that feels calm rather than sharp. The home office, by contrast, is the place for geometry: clean shapes, clear lines, and a visual language related to functionalism, which is why Bauhaus posters often feel surprisingly at home in a brutalist room. The connection is no accident, as we’ve described in our overview of Bauhaus history.
The kitchen and dining area are the rooms where the style is most often overdone. Concrete-gray countertops, dark cabinet doors, and gray walls become heavy without becoming interesting, because nothing is allowed to contrast. Instead, let one surface be raw and keep the others calm, using the art as the warm focal point. A subject in earthy tones or a single saturated accent against the surrounding gray makes the whole room come into focus. The same logic applies to the bathroom, where tiles and lime plaster already add texture and the art mainly needs to provide direction.
Tip: Go one size up from what you initially had in mind. Brutalist rooms have large uninterrupted surfaces, and a 30x40 cm print that works in a typical apartment looks lost against a concrete wall. Use 70x100 cm as a starting point above a sofa, and leave at least twenty centimeters of clear space around the frame.
Subject, frame, and light – how to bring the grayscale to life
Choosing a subject follows a simple rule: the image should have the same kind of honesty as the room. Architectural photography is the most obvious choice, especially images where shadows do the work and the concrete’s texture is visible. Our selection of posters featuring famous places includes several subjects with that kind of weight. After architecture, the next best choices are strict geometry and abstractions built from a few elements. Avoid images with lots of small details – they break down the calm mass that is the point of the style.
Brutalism isn’t black and white by principle, but it can only handle a few colors at a time. A muted rust brown, an oxidized green, or a sand-yellow accent print has more impact in a gray room than five colors do. If you want to keep things strictly minimalist, minimalist posters are the safest bet.
Choosing a frame is where most people go wrong. A glossy white frame clashes with the style’s matte finish. Instead, choose a black or dark gray frame with a slim profile, or untreated light wood if the room already has warm elements. A mat is optional, but if you use one, make it generous in size – a narrow margin looks indecisive in a room that otherwise relies on clear choices.
Lighting makes all the difference. Gray tones are more sensitive to poor lighting than almost any other colors because they have no inherent hue to fall back on. A light source with high color rendering makes the grayscale feel deep rather than flat and dirty. We’ve explored the mechanism in detail in the article about how light transforms art on the wall.
Frequently asked questions about brutalism in interior design
Brutalism rewards those who dare to go big with scale and limit the number of elements. Start with a large piece on the most enclosed wall you have, give it plenty of negative space and warm light, and add more only when the room calls for it. If you want to browse the full selection before deciding, you’ll find it among our photographic art prints, where architecture and structure are particularly well represented.
Further reading: The Art Story provides an overview of Brutalism as an architectural movement, and Kulturhuset Stadsteatern describes Peter Celsing’s architecture in the building at Sergels torg.