& Other Stories Unisex Home Accessories: Where Minimalist Design Meets Everyday Living

There’s something quietly radical about a brand that refuses to draw a hard line between masculine and feminine. When & Other Stories launched its home accessories range, it did exactly that — stepping into domestic spaces with the same thoughtful, gender-fluid approach that had already won it devoted followers in fashion. The result is a collection of objects that feel personal without being prescriptive, beautiful without being fussy, and designed with the kind of restraint that actually makes a room feel more alive.

If you’ve been searching for home accessories that carry genuine aesthetic intention without demanding you fit into a particular style category, & Other Stories has quietly become one of the most interesting places to look.

What Makes & Other Stories Different in the Home Accessories Space

Most high street brands that venture into homeware fall into one of two traps: they either lean into maximalist, trend-chasing decorative pieces that age badly, or they play it so safe that everything blurs into beige nothingness. & Other Stories manages to occupy a more interesting third territory.

The brand’s DNA comes from its fashion roots — it’s part of the H&M Group but operates with creative independence, drawing on studios in Stockholm, Paris, and Los Angeles. That multicultural, multidisciplinary sensibility bleeds directly into the home accessories line. You’ll find objects that feel informed by Scandinavian functionalism, French interior sensibility, and Californian ease all at once, without any single influence overwhelming the others.

The unisex approach to home accessories matters more than it might first appear. Traditional homeware has long been gendered in subtle ways — florals and pastels coded as feminine, industrial finishes and dark tones coded as masculine — and those codes have shaped what people feel permitted to bring into their own spaces. & Other Stories sidesteps all of that. Their candles, ceramics, storage pieces, and decorative objects are designed to appeal to any sensibility, any household configuration, any aesthetic identity.

This isn’t a marketing gimmick. It shows up in the actual design choices: clean geometric forms that don’t skew romantic or rugged, neutral and earthy colour palettes that read as neither overtly masculine nor feminine, textures that suggest craft and quality rather than any particular lifestyle aspiration.

The Candle Collection: Fragrance as a Design Element

One of the standout categories in the & Other Stories home range is its candles, and they deserve serious attention. Candles have become a genuinely saturated market — every brand from luxury perfume houses to fast-fashion retailers now makes them — but & Other Stories approaches the candle as a design object first and a fragrance delivery vehicle second.

The vessels are typically minimal: clean cylindrical or squared-off glass, sometimes frosted, sometimes clear, with typography that leans spare and architectural. These are objects you keep on a shelf after the wax is gone, which is exactly the point. The fragrance profiles themselves tend toward the complex and slightly unexpected — you’re less likely to find straightforward vanilla or lavender than you are to encounter something that layers vetiver with cedar, or fig with a cool mineral note. These are fragrances that work equally well in a study, a bathroom, a bedroom, or a shared living space without feeling either aggressively spa-like or overly romantic.

For anyone building a home aesthetic around thoughtful, unisex scent — where fragrance contributes to atmosphere rather than signalling anything about the inhabitant’s gender — these candles are worth keeping an eye on seasonally. & Other Stories refreshes its fragrance offering regularly, often tying new scents to broader collection releases.

Ceramics and Vessels: The Beauty of Purposeful Imperfection

The ceramics in the & Other Stories home line reflect a sensibility that’s become increasingly central to contemporary interior design: an appreciation for the handmade, the slightly irregular, the object that shows evidence of its own making. This isn’t the mass-produced homogeneity of perfectly identical pieces; there’s variation in glaze, slight asymmetries in form, a deliberate roughness at edges that suggests the work of human hands rather than a factory line.

What makes these pieces particularly appealing in a unisex context is how they function across different interior styles. A stoneware bud vase in muted terracotta works in a minimal Scandinavian interior, a more eclectic maximalist space, a warm Mediterranean-inflected room, or even a contemporary urban apartment that prioritises texture over colour. The pieces don’t announce themselves aggressively — they contribute to a room’s atmosphere without demanding centre stage.

The glazes & Other Stories favours tend to run toward earthy, complex tones: dusty pinks that read more blush-grey than feminine, deep ocean blues that feel contemplative rather than coastal, off-whites and creams that feel warm rather than clinical. There are occasional bolder choices — a dark matte black, a deep forest green — that add visual weight without tipping into any particular aesthetic camp.

Practically speaking, many of these ceramic pieces are genuinely functional as well as decorative. Vessels that work as vases also hold pens and brushes. Small bowls meant for decorative display work just as well holding keys, jewellery, or loose change by the door. This functional flexibility feels entirely in keeping with the brand’s overall approach: beauty that earns its place through usefulness, not just appearance.

Storage and Organisation: Where Aesthetic Meets Practical Living

One of the less obvious but genuinely impressive corners of the & Other Stories home accessories range is its approach to storage. Organisation is one of those domestic necessities that most brands treat as a purely practical concern — the challenge of making it attractive is usually left entirely to the buyer. & Other Stories thinks differently.

Their storage pieces — boxes, trays, small organisational containers, baskets — carry the same design language as their more overtly decorative pieces. A lacquered tray in a deep neutral tone is as much a decorative object as it is a functional one. Woven baskets don’t look like afterthoughts from a supermarket homeware aisle; they look considered, sourced with attention, proportioned to sit comfortably alongside other decorative elements rather than being hidden away.

This matters in the context of unisex home design because storage is one of the areas where gendered assumptions die hardest. The idea that a man’s desk or bathroom should just be functional while a woman’s equivalent should be prettily organised is a strange and limiting one. & Other Stories’ storage pieces suggest that everyone deserves objects that are worth looking at, regardless of what those objects are for.

For bathrooms in particular, the range offers pieces that work well against tile and freestanding products without feeling either clinical or overly decorative — a balance that’s genuinely hard to achieve.

Textiles and Soft Furnishings: Texture Over Pattern

While the core of the & Other Stories home accessories range sits in hard goods — ceramics, glass, metal — the brand has also ventured into textiles, and the approach here is consistent with everything else: texture-led, pattern-restrained, gender-neutral.

Where many homeware brands treat textiles as an opportunity for bold graphic statements or overt decorative flourishes, & Other Stories typically favours weaves and finishes that speak for themselves. A throw in a tightly looped bouclé, a cushion cover with a subtle ribbed texture, a simple linen blend in a colour that sits somewhere between stone and cloud — these are pieces whose appeal is haptic as much as visual. You want to touch them, which is ultimately the highest compliment you can pay a textile.

The colour language here is worth noting: & Other Stories consistently works in a palette that feels thoughtfully edited rather than defaulted. This isn’t just “safe” neutrals — it’s neutrals with personality, often with a slight chromatic complexity that means the colour reads differently in morning light versus evening, in natural versus artificial illumination. These are the kinds of subtle decisions that distinguish genuinely well-designed objects from merely inoffensive ones.

For anyone decorating a shared space — whether that’s a shared home between partners with different aesthetic sensibilities, a flat share, or simply a room that needs to work for multiple people — the textile approach here is genuinely useful. Pieces that derive their interest from texture rather than bold pattern are easier to combine, easier to live with long-term, and less likely to feel dated in a few seasons.

Fragrance and Personal Ritual: Beyond the Candle

Beyond candles, & Other Stories has explored other fragrance formats within its home accessories range — room sprays, diffusers, and occasionally solid fragrance objects. The common thread is the same commitment to unisex olfactory territory: fragrance profiles that don’t announce a gender before they announce a mood.

There’s been a broader cultural shift toward thinking about home fragrance as an extension of personal ritual — the morning spray of a room mist, the evening lighting of a candle, the diffuser that creates a consistent olfactory baseline for a particular space. & Other Stories understands this shift and designs for it, producing pieces that fit easily into a ritual context without feeling overly ceremonial or precious.

The packaging across these fragrance products maintains the brand’s characteristic restraint: minimal text, clean structures, materials that feel good to handle. These are objects that look at home on a bathroom shelf or a bedroom side table without requiring any particular stage dressing around them.

How to Style & Other Stories Home Accessories

Understanding what these pieces are designed to do is one thing; actually integrating them into a living space is another. A few principles tend to work particularly well with the & Other Stories aesthetic.

The brand’s pieces reward clustering — bringing together several objects of varying heights and textures in a single vignette creates a visual moment that feels considered rather than decorated. A stoneware vase alongside a single-wick candle and a small ceramic bowl, all sitting on a tray or a natural stone surface, is a classic & Other Stories styling move. The key is editing: fewer objects, more space between them, attention to the negative space as much as the objects themselves.

Material mixing is another approach that works well. & Other Stories’ pieces tend to hold their own against a range of other materials — natural wood, rough concrete, smooth marble, warm brass, aged rattan. The brand’s objects rarely compete aggressively with their surroundings because they’re designed with enough restraint to integrate.

For those working with a genuinely open-plan or shared space, using fragrance objects — candles, diffusers — to define zones is an underrated technique. A specific scent associated with a reading corner or a desk space creates a sensory boundary that doesn’t require any physical separation.

Finally, don’t overlook functionality when styling these pieces. A beautiful bowl on a console table becomes more interesting when it actually holds something — keys, stones collected on a walk, a handful of loose matches alongside a box of them. The & Other Stories home range is at its best when it’s being used, not just displayed.

Sustainability and Considered Consumption

Any honest discussion of a brand’s home accessories range in 2024 and beyond needs to address sustainability. & Other Stories, as part of the H&M Group, operates within the broader sustainability commitments and challenges of a large retail organisation, which means the picture is complex.

What can be said is that the aesthetic of the range — restrained, quality-focused, designed to last rather than trend — lends itself to more considered consumption. These aren’t pieces you replace each season. A well-made ceramic vessel, a quality candle holder, a solid storage piece — these are the kinds of objects that stay in a home for years, accumulating meaning as they accumulate minor scratches and patina. The design choices that make these pieces feel timeless also make them genuinely more sustainable in how they tend to be used.

The brand has also worked toward incorporating more sustainable materials across its broader range, and this extends to home accessories — recycled glass, organic cotton, materials sourced with attention to provenance. If this is a priority for you, it’s worth checking the specific product information for each piece, as commitments vary across the line.

Seasonal Collections and What to Watch For

One of the rhythms worth understanding with & Other Stories home accessories is the seasonal collection structure. Like the fashion line, the home range refreshes with regularity, bringing new colourways, new fragrance profiles, and occasionally new product categories. This means that what’s available at any given moment is genuinely time-sensitive, and pieces that resonate tend to sell quickly.

The most reliable windows for strong home accessory launches tend to cluster around the transitional seasons — late summer into autumn tends to bring warmer, heavier fragrance profiles and deeper colour palettes; late winter into spring shifts toward lighter, more airy tones and fresher scents. Gift-oriented releases around the winter holidays typically bring limited-edition packaging and curated sets that make particularly strong cases for the brand’s overall aesthetic coherence.

Following the brand on its website and newsletter is genuinely useful if you’re actively looking to add pieces — restocks are limited, and the pieces that sell out fastest are often the ones most worth having.

The Broader Appeal: Why Unisex Home Design Matters

Stepping back from the specifics of the range, it’s worth sitting with the larger question of why the unisex approach to home accessories matters as a design and cultural proposition.

Homes are shared spaces, or spaces that need to hold multiple versions of a person across different moods and moments. The idea that your home’s aesthetic should be legible as belonging to a particular gender presumes a rigidity about identity that most people don’t actually live. Even in households where individuals have strong aesthetic preferences, those preferences rarely map neatly onto gendered categories.

& Other Stories’ unisex home accessories range isn’t making a political statement about this — it’s simply designing from a starting point of openness, creating objects that don’t prescribe the life being lived around them. The objects are beautiful, they’re functional, they’re thoughtfully made, and they don’t ask anything of you except that you find them worth having in your space.

That’s a modest ambition, and it’s exactly the right one. The best domestic objects are the ones you stop noticing after a while — not because they’ve become invisible, but because they’ve become genuinely part of the life being lived around them. By that measure, the & Other Stories home accessories range is doing something quietly worth paying attention to.

Whether you’re furnishing a new space, refreshing a tired one, or simply looking for pieces that bring a little more intentionality to the everyday, the & Other Stories home accessories range offers a thoughtful starting point. Browse the current collection on the & Other Stories website, where pieces are updated seasonally — and act quickly when something catches your eye. The good ones never last long.