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According to some scientists, the Sahara Desert has been expanding at a rate of about 50 kilometres a year.

Now, its aesthetic influence is catching up.

Over the past several months, a hot desert wind has been blowing through the design world, bringing the colours, motifs and magic of the region to trendy interiors everywhere.

At last week's International Interior Design Show in Montreal, for instance, Malian designer Aboubakar Fofana, whose beautiful hand-spun textiles have been picked up by Paris's fashion houses, was a highlight of the third annual African-design exhibit.

His appearance followed on the footsteps of similar showcases in Miami, Paris and Milan, where companies and designers such as David Adjaye of Britain, Zenza of the Netherlands and Istanbul-born Arzu Firuz of France wowed showgoers with their desert-inspired furniture, perforated pendant lamps and graphic vinyl floor mats respectively.

Picking up on the trend and adding his own twist, the popular American furniture and housewares designer Jonathan Adler augmented his product line recently with a lattice-like rug pattern called Marrakesh.

Pottery Barn, meanwhile, has just introduced a carpet line called Moorish Tile in colours including clementine orange, pineapple yellow and espresso.

According to Leigh Oshirak, Pottery Barn's director of public relations and marketing communications, Moorish Tile is proving so popular that the San Francisco-based company also plans to release settees, pillows, bedding and decorative ceramic jars in the pattern come fall.

So why exactly is Saharan style so, well, hot right now?

Vancouver architect David Nicolay, whose firm, Evoke International Design, gave the city's popular Sanafir restaurant its sleek “updated North African” look, feels that the region's appeal is a timeless one, especially among jaded Westerners.

“Modern design can be stale,” he says. “I think that the really rich colours and exotic style of the area are very attractive to people. There's the laying on beds, the sheer drapery, the sitting on the floor to eat. It's very romantic.”

At the same time, historic North African hubs are remaking themselves as 21st-century style capitals while retaining their exotic allure.

Places such as Marrakesh have been attracting international style makers since at least the 1960s, when a young Yves St. Laurent bought a home, the magnificent Villa Majorelle, in the city.

Now, however, other regional hot spots, such as Tunis and Alexandria, are attracting the jet set, too.

Just this week, The New York Times called the Tunisian capital “a multifaceted gem” with “an extraordinary amount to offer,” while Travel & Leisure has declared that “everything old is new again” in Egypt's second city.

Not to be outdone, Marrakesh is burnishing its elegant image further.

Not long ago, the British society magazine Tatler described the launch of the city's Riad Noir d'Ivoire, a spectacular oasis of a hotel created by a worldly Franco-English couple, as “probably the prettiest opening of the past year.”

Even former pariah or war-ravaged states such as Libya and Algeria are getting in on the picture, opening themselves up to Western travellers again after long periods of isolation.

Both countries were ranked among the top places to visit in 2008 by the Times, which cited their “oasis towns,” “cart-wide streets” and “stellar ruins” as reasons to hop on a plane.

If a trek through the Sahara just isn't on the horizon, however, the ubiquity of its tones and trappings in the current design climate makes it easy to evoke at home.

Consider, for instance, some of this year's regionally inspired paint-colour intros, from Farrow & Ball's Terre D'Egypte (247) to Benjamin Moore's Soleil (AF-330) or Kasbah (AF-640).

And as the contemporary room setting on these pages shows, the allure of the desert is also just a camel cart chair or glass of mint tea away.