Outdated Home Decorating Color Guidelines to Discard in 2025 - These Outdated Concepts May Prevent You from Optimally Decorating Your Home
In the world of interior design, trends are constantly evolving, and 2025 is no exception. This year, designers are moving away from cooler, stark, and high contrast palettes, opting instead for warmer, softer neutrals.
Paula Taylor, a senior stylist and trend specialist at Graham & Brown, a family-run, UK-based paint and wallpaper company founded in 1946, suggests that designers are embracing bolder color schemes and techniques such as double-drenching a room in a tonal or complementary palette.
One of the outdated color trends worth reconsidering in 2025 is stark white curtains. Once popular for their crisp minimalism, these are now viewed as cold, clinical, and sterile. Designers prefer warmer off-whites, ivory, or soft pastels that add subtle depth and warmth to neutral spaces.
Another trend to reconsider is the use of cool gray tones, especially in flooring. Gray, which has become divisive and is largely seen as drab, uninspired, and cold, is being replaced with warmer, natural wood tones such as beiges, medium browns, and soft whites that create a grounding warmth.
Primary colors and bold color contrasts are also losing favor in curtain selections as trends shift toward more nuanced, warm, and expressive palettes that integrate better with the modern home's evolving style.
Rules around color usage are changing as well. Outdated conventions such as "walls and trim must match and be white" are being discarded. Designers now encourage using trim and door colors as opportunities to express personality, often selecting tone-matching or colorful trims to create seamless, modern, or moody aesthetics.
Amy Courtney, an interior designer based in New England, is embracing this shift. Amy Courtney Design is known for decorating with saturated colors to create depth, mood, and character, especially in small rooms. Amy, who was born and raised in New York and Connecticut, has over 18 years of interior design and renovation experience, starting her career working with top tri-state design and architecture firms.
A new trend in color accenting is emerging, where a detail in the room is accentuated with a complementary color on the color wheel. This technique helps create movement, dimension, and cohesion in a space, rather than relying on one singular element to carry the entire room.
In a successful color-accented room, accessories, decor, and larger furniture items are used to create a statement that draws the eye around the room. Using a tone-matched or colorful trim can also create a seamless, modern, or moody aesthetic.
However, rules when it comes to color are meant to be broken, according to the designers interviewed. Using darker tones can also make a room more intimate, such as Graham & Brown's State Room or Rhapsody.
In summary, the main colors to reconsider or update in 2025 are stark whites, cool grays, primary colors, and strict matching of wall and trim colors, in favor of warmer, more textured, and nuanced palettes that foster welcoming, grounded interiors.
- In 2025, designers are leaning towards warmer, softer neutrals, moving away from cooler, stark, and high contrast palettes, as suggested by Paula Taylor, a senior stylist at Graham & Brown.
- Designers are embracing bolder color schemes and techniques such as double-drenching a room in a tonal or complementary palette, according to Taylor.
- Stark white curtains, once popular for their crisp minimalism, are being viewed as cold, clinical, and sterile, with designers opting for warmer off-whites, ivory, or soft pastels instead.
- Gray flooring, which has become divisive and is largely considered drab, uninspired, and cold, is being replaced with warmer, natural wood tones such as beiges, medium browns, and soft whites.
- Rules around color usage are changing, with outdated conventions like "walls and trim must match and be white" being discarded, and designers now encouraging the use of trim and door colors to express personality.
- A new trend in color accenting is emerging, where a detail in the room is accentuated with a complementary color on the color wheel, creating movement, dimension, and cohesion in a space.
