Outdated Home Decorating Color Guidelines to Avoid in 2025 - These Obsolete Principles are Inhibiting Your Home's Optimal Style
In the world of interior design, 2025 is shaping up to be a year of daring color moments and breaking traditional rules. According to senior stylist Paula Taylor, a trend specialist at Graham & Brown, a UK-based paint and wallpaper company founded in 1946, the design industry is moving away from the conventional 60/30/10 color rule.
Instead, designers are embracing tonal or complementary palettes, double-drenching rooms in a single hue for a harmonious and impactful look. This approach, according to Taylor, creates balanced and dynamic spaces that exude personality and style.
A successful color-accented room, as advised by interior designer Alex Vitale, uses accessories, decor, and larger furniture items to create a statement that draws the eye around the room. Gone are the days of having only one accent wall, a practice that Vitale compares to a bad mullet—still present but no longer in style.
Instead, the new trend is 'color accenting', which involves creating a showpiece by accenting a detail in the room with the complementary color on the color wheel. This technique adds depth and dimension to a space, making it feel more inviting, layered, and full of character.
One of the most significant shifts in 2025's color trends is the embrace of dark colors in small rooms. The old rule that dark colors should be avoided in small spaces is now outdated. Designers are using deep blues, purples, and other dark shades to create cozy, moody environments even in smaller rooms.
Another trend is moving away from white trim. The traditional rule that walls and trim must match, especially with white trim, is considered passé. Instead, using contrasting or colorful trim adds personality and creates a seamless or moody aesthetic.
Designers are also moving away from overusing gray tones, especially in flooring. Gray flooring, which dominated in the 2010s, is now seen as cold, uninspired, and often associated with builder-grade finishes. Instead, designers are opting for warmer tones such as beiges, light walnut, dark chocolate browns, and soft whites that better ground a space.
Lastly, the trend is shifting from cool, minimalistic tones toward warm, cozy color palettes embracing earthy hues like soft clays, warm sands, sage greens, terracotta, and pastel color drenching. This change creates spaces with warmth and personality, moving away from the clinical and cold palettes of the past.
In conclusion, 2025's interior color trends encourage breaking traditional rules about dark colors in small rooms and white trim, moving away from gray and cool tones to richer, warmer, and more personalized palettes that reflect bold expression and cozy, grounded atmospheres. This fresh approach allows interiors to feel more inviting, layered, and full of character.
- The design industry is leaning towards using a single hue to double-drench rooms, replacing the conventional 60/30/10 color rule.
- Accessories, decor, and larger furniture items are being used to create statements in color-accented rooms, with the practice of having only one accent wall becoming outdated.
- Dark colors, such as deep blues and purples, are being embraced for small rooms, as the old rule that they should be avoided in such spaces is now considered outdated.
- Using contrasting or colorful trim instead of white is becoming popular, as it adds personality and creates a seamless or moody aesthetic.
- Designers are moving away from gray flooring, viewing it as cold, uninspired, and associated with builder-grade finishes.
- Warm, cozy color palettes that embrace earthy hues like soft clays, warm sands, sage greens, terracotta, and pastels are becoming trendy, moving away from the clinical and cold palettes of the past.
