Outdated Color Guidelines to Leave Behind in 2025 - These Concepts might be Preventing You from Crafting Your Home's Optimal Decor
In 2025, the world of interior design is undergoing a significant transformation, with cool grays and overly neutral, clinical palettes taking a backseat. These once popular trends, which dominated the past decade, are being replaced by warmer, earthy tones and palettes inspired by natural materials.
According to Alex Vitale, an interior designer and founder of Vitale Design Group, the traditional accent wall feels outdated, and a new trend known as 'color accenting' is gaining popularity. This approach involves using a complementary color on the color wheel to create a statement in a room, rather than relying on a single accent wall.
Amy Courtney, an interior designer based in New England, is embracing the use of saturated colors to create depth, mood, and character, even in small rooms. Deep burgundy kitchen cabinets and color-drenched home offices are examples of the darker tones being used in such spaces.
Rules when it comes to color are meant to be broken, as designers are pushing, playing, and challenging them to create the best interiors. The idea that trim and doors always have to be white is outdated, and using a split complementary color palette can help achieve the desired effect.
Graham & Brown, a family-run, UK-based paint and wallpaper company founded in 1946, is at the forefront of this change. Senior stylist Paula Taylor, a trend specialist at Graham & Brown, suggests that designers are embracing bolder color schemes and techniques like double-drenching a room in a tonal or complementary palette.
Maximalism and intentional drama are influencing color use more boldly, with jewel tones and layered patterns returning alongside earth tones. Blues are trending but in more complex, moody shades with gray or green undertones.
The 60-30-10 color rule, a common guideline for color distribution in a room, is considered limiting by some designers in 2025. Tone-matching trim or even colorful trim can create a seamless, modern, or moody aesthetic and are good ways to incorporate color in a room without having to repaint an entire wall.
A successful color-accented room uses accessories, decor, and furniture to create movement, dimension, and cohesion, rather than relying on one singular element to carry the entire room.
Amy Courtney, born and raised in New York and Connecticut, has over 18 years of interior design and renovation experience. Her design studio, Amy Courtney Design, is based in New England.
By reconsidering outdated color trends and embracing warmer, earthy tones, designers are creating interiors that feel fresh, current, and engaging. Finding out the outdated colors in 2025 is important to ensure you design a room that feels on trend.
- In the future of interior design in 2025, the trend is shifting from cool grays and overly neutral palettes towards warmer, earthy tones inspired by natural materials.
- Color accenting, a new approach to accent walls, is gaining popularity, using a complementary color on the color wheel to create a statement in a room.
- Designers like Amy Courtney are using saturated colors to bring depth, mood, and character, even in smaller rooms, with darker tones seen in kitchen cabinets and home offices.
- Graham & Brown, a leading paint and wallpaper company, suggests that designers are embracing bolder color schemes and techniques like double-drenching a room in a tonal or complementary palette.
- Maximalism and intentional drama are influencing color use more boldly, with jewel tones, layered patterns, and complex, moody shades of blues returning alongside earth tones.
- To create a successful color-accented room, designers should use accessories, decor, and furniture to create movement, dimension, and cohesion, rather than relying on one singular element to carry the entire room.
