Let’s spare ourselves the lengthy trip down memory lane—the stomach-churning headlines, the cloth masks, the bleach-sprayed groceries. It started five years ago, to the month. We were all there, and we all remember what those early days of Covid were like.

Those of us in the industry also have a set of—let’s face it—complicated associations with the pandemic. While the world was falling apart, the world was buying furniture. Covid was a boom time, unleashing a fountain of opportunity for designers, retailers, manufacturers, and anyone else who could even tangentially claim to be in the business of home.

That boom is over. Some analysts predicted we’d forever be wearing masks and bumping elbows—that’s over too. Save for scuffed-up social distancing stickers clinging stubbornly to linoleum floors, there’s not a ton of physical evidence that we recently went through a global pandemic.

But we’re all still operating in a world that has been shaped by Covid. And five years later, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on all the ways the pandemic did (and didn’t) leave a lasting impact on the design industry.