How Designers Can Draw Inspiration from the Airbnb

Airbnb 2025 App Redesign 3d Icon Design Trend: How It’s Inspiring Designers Everywhere

Discover how the Airbnb 2025 app redesign is setting new standards in mobile UI through innovative Airbnb 3D icon design. Learn how designers like David Pietrasiak have embraced the isometric clay style icon design aesthetic and how you can create or generate similar icons using AI tools like DALL·E and ChatGPT.

In May 2025, Airbnb launched its Airbnb Summer Release 2025, redefining the platform with one of its most ambitious updates yet. From introducing exclusive Airbnb Icons experiences hosted by celebrities to a complete mobile UI redesign in 2025 featuring vibrant isometric 3d icons, Airbnb is transforming how users experience travel, services, and inspiration within one app.

The new interface immediately stands out. Say goodbye to flat, minimal UI, instead, enjoy soft, toy-like 3d icons with clay textures and a lively pastel colour palette that breathe fresh life into mobile navigation.

🏡 What Are Airbnb Icons?

As part of the Airbnb Summer Release 2025, Airbnb Icons experiences are curated events hosted by famous personalities and brands. Highlights include:

🎈 Staying in the house from Pixar’s Up
🍽️ Dining with Janhvi Kapoor
🎤 Attending an exclusive show with Doja Cat
🎬 Touring the animation studio behind Inside Out 2

These experiences are brought to life through charming, detailed 3D icons, which help users intuitively explore offerings with ease.

🎨 The 3d Icon Revolution: Soft Clay, Isometric Magic

 The mobile UI redesign 2025 introduces clay-like, isometric 3D icons across categories such as “Homes,” “Experiences,” and the new “Services.” These icons appear hand-crafted and warm, adding personality and clarity to the interface.

👇 Key features of Airbnb’s 2025 3d icon design include:

• Soft clay-like textures
• Isometric perspective with a 30° tilt
• Pastel palette featuring soft coral, light beige, mint green, and baby blue
• Subtle shadows that add toy-like depth
• Minimalistic but emotionally engaging style

This aesthetic signals a return to skeuomorphic mobile design, where digital elements borrow inspiration from the physical world.

👨‍🎨 Design Inspiration: David Pietrasiak’s Tribute

Inspired by Airbnb’s visual evolution, designer David Pietrasiak recreated his entire app’s icon set using Airbnb’s new style. His clay style icon design features pillowy 3d buttons for “Search,” “Deals,” “Bakery,” and more, proving this trend’s adaptability across different industries. His work highlights a clear shift that digital icons should delight as much as they inform.

🧠 How to Design 3D Icons Like Airbnb’s 2025 Style

Want to learn how to design 3D icons inspired by Airbnb’s aesthetic? Here’s a quick guide:

🔧 Tools to use:

• 3D Modeling: Blender, Spline, Adobe Dimension
• Vector Editing: Figma, Illustrator
• AI Design: DALL·E, MidJourney, ChatGPT image generation tools

🤖 Using AI Generated UI Icons

You can generate Airbnb-style icons effortlessly with AI tools like DALL·E or MidJourney by using the right prompts.

Create a 3D isometric-style vector icon of a white sedan car parked in front of an airport control tower. Mimic Airbnb’s recent icon style: soft clay-like textures, pastel color palette, minimalistic details, and subtle shadows for a toy-like depth. Use light beige and soft blue colors with smooth shading.

Feel free to swap “hot-air balloon” with any icon you need (home, profile, chat bubble, bell, etc.).

🧭 Final Thoughts: Design That Feels Alive

The Airbnb app update 2025 is more than a feature upgrade it’s a new emotional and experiential standard. Through 3D icons, celebrity-hosted Airbnb Icons experiences, and a playful yet sophisticated design language, Airbnb has redefined how apps look and feel.

Designers and creators now have a clear blueprint to follow or expand on. Whether manually crafted or AI generated, the future of UI is distinctly clay-like, intuitively isometric, and unmistakably human.

👉 Contact Oritop for custom design systems, icon sets, and AI-powered creative workflows inspired by the best in the industry.