2025 Color and Design Trends

Amy K

Color is the foundation of great design. It can settle a building into its landscape. It can make an unattractive structural detail just disappear, and it can change your mood in a room instantly. Welcome to Let's Talk Color. I'm Amy Krane, architectural color consultant at Amy Krane Color.

I'm a color expert and use color to transform spaces and products from the ordinary to the sublime. As a paint color specialist, realtor, and design writer. I've got my finger on the pulse of what's happening in the world of color. In each episode, I'll reveal best practices for choosing color by introducing you to masters of color for the built world. So throw out those paint chips taped to your walls, and let's get started.

Today, I welcome back my friend, colleague, and former co-host, Amy Woolf, to talk about the color and design trends right now, including the 2025 Colors of the Year now that they're all announced. Amy, why don't you just rattle off all of the major color names for us to get started?

Amy W

We've got from Dutch Boy, a color called Mapped Blue, which is a grayed down turquoise, you know blue-green, Valspar Encore, which looks to me like a bright, I don't know, kind of a cadet blue maybe. C2 Raku, which is a dark reddened brown. Dunn Edwards Caramelized, which is exactly what it sounds like. PPG Glidden called Purple Basil for the color of the year for them.

Again, exactly what it sounds like. Benjamin Moore coming in with another purple. They chose Cinnamon Slate, which is a desaturated grayed-down purple that almost feels neutral. Behr, again, with the purplish, you know the purple vibe, we've got Rumors. Sherwin-Williams for HGTV picked Quietude, which is a great color, but hmm, yawn.

Amy K

Feels kind of like dated, but we'll get to that in a bit. Pantone, as we well know, the last one to roll out. Selected Mocha Mousse and Little Greene, which is a UK brand, which we like to love around here, picked a color called Mochi, which feels a little bit like a light version of the mocha mousse, mocha and mochi.

Okay. I know it's not of any relevance, but when they're all laid out like that on one page, it's always interesting to look at them altogether.

Amy W

And I'm fascinated by how, with a couple of exceptions, they go beautifully together  as a color scheme. I really thought, wow, they feel so cohesive maybe because it's a limited number of hues. You know, there aren't really outliers, like a bright green or any kind of yellow or a clear red. But they really harmonize beautifully together, which means nothing.

But it is interesting, Amy. I think it's a good thought exercise.

If you pull out the bright blue from Valspar, I think you're totally right. I think you could just do a whole house, a whole room. I think the Benjamin Moore Cinnamon Slate paired with the Quietude from Sherwin-Williams for HGTV. Throw a Little Greene mochi in there. That's wild. I don't think I would have ever thought about purple and teal together in quite this way, but I think they work.

Amy K

You know I think they both share they have a shared desaturation. Those two work together.

Well, I was going to say that. I think other than Valspar's Encore, which really is like a cadet or even cobalt blue, they are all desaturated, muted colors. I mean, to different degrees, but there are no very clear colors in there.

I think one thing that's so interesting is that different companies, I'm sure, start the process of deciding what their color of the year is going to be at different points. I know you've talked about being in the Color Marketing Group and how many years ahead you work on palettes for the future. But I think it just feels like these were done really recently. And I did hear some interview of I don't even remember which company it is.

It might have been Benjamin Moore who said they start working on it in January. So that's the same calendar year, which I think definitely helps make colors relevant to now because you know there's only so much anticipating you could do for what the world's going to be about in two years from now. So closer to the launch point seems to be quite valuable. I mean, I'm thinking back about the you know I do on my blog at the end of the year, my color and design trend forecast. https://amykranecolor.com/4361/10-new-design-and-color-trends-for-2025

It's a matter of what's happening right now and clearly going into the future. And this is the second or third year, that brown's been talked about really a lot. So it's interesting to think about how these colors creep up on you.  They’re in the design sites and then boom, everyone’s doing it. Don’t you think there’s tpns of tzlk about brown?

           Amy W

I think Brown for sure. And I know that this year, without giving away any specifics with Color Marketing Group this year in our forecasting process, we certainly saw more brown and a movement toward red and darker reds, you know darker, deeper, more desaturated reds.

Amy K

Yeah, that's interesting because you know thinking about browns being able to lean in the yellow or the red direction, I definitely see them leaning towards red. And also, I'm in agreement with you. I mean, when I did my trend forecast for colors this coming year, besides mentioning greens, which are still so much with us, I just clumped all of these colors together and said you know burgundy, brown, brown- purple, deep plum.

I put them all together and said, "That's what's happening right now." And then as I think back to it, they all have this sort of deep, deep redness in them. It's like what's tying them together for me, a deep, deep red. Also, I looked back at the past bunch of years of Pantones. And since 2020, there were two colors chosen in the purple family.

I know they didn't go purple this year, but they were very, very punchy, like a periwinkle, very peri. And there was another one back in '20 that was also a mid-tone, very clear purple. And so it's just interesting, again, to think about purple just percolating out there. I mean, for so many people, it's not a go-to. It's not very usable or functional. I think it could be gorgeous.

Amy W

I mean, not necessarily as a whole room, but you know as some aspect of your decor, or maybe even if you're painting a deep color  always look towards a den, library or dining room. It's those rooms you think about really being very comfortable to have a

dark color in there. And I can see certain purples being used in that way. What do you think?

Yeah. One of the colors we love to use is called Powell Smokehouse.

And I haven't really looked at Powell Smokehouse up against Cinnamon Slate. I have a feeling it's a little more neutral, but I've put it in powder rooms, put it in a music room, and it's definitely one of these kind of smoky mid-tone, not too dark colors. It's interesting. It's a color that feels dark but technically isn't as dark as some of these other colors of the year. So I think it's really useful.

Amy K

Sherwin-Williams this year, you know almost all of them release a whole palette that goes hand-in-hand with their single color of the year. But instead, Sherwin-Williams released these four capsules, which are color collections called Kindred, Wellspring, Paradox, and Chrysalis. And they're very different from one another. One of them is really heavily in the neutral and brownish neutral world.

Amy W

That's chrysalis. The others are different. I don't see a lot of cohesion in the colors picked in each of the collections. But why do you think they did this? Was it purely just a marketing thing, "Let's be different this year? Let's see if we get more buzz out of the fact we're releasing a lot of colors or what?"

You know Sherwin-Williams' Color of the Year last year was Redend Point, which was a decidedly pinky -brown.

Amy K

Amy W

So perhaps they were a little bit ahead of the curve. I personally found that color repulsive.

Yeah I really didn't like it.

I was at High Point Market and saw it in the Sherwin-Williams installation there where they hold their talks. And I saw you know entire walls painted in this color. And just as some people don't like purple, I kind of have a problem with pinky browns.

Snarky me says they didn't pick one color because last year's pick was so bad. But that's me being snarky. It is funny, though, as I look around at their collection, that weird outlier from Valspar shows up in the Paradox collection for Sherwin-Williams, that blue that just feels odd.

Amy K

You know they've included Carnelian and Mexican sand. And you know it is funny how you could almost plug and play all the rest of the colors of the year into this Sherwin palette.

Then you'd have a bunch of outliers. You'd have these oranges and yellows. I mean, with the exception of the chrysalis one, which again is almost all brown leaning neutrals, warm neutrals and grays and off-whites, you could say that the other palettes just pick one color from each hue family.

Amy W

I mean, it's so unspecific to me. To me, it just dilutes the impact. It dilutes the impact of saying you know this color's great, and it's a new direction. And think about using it

next year because it's so fresh and modern and right now. But instead, if you've got 48 colors…. meh. Yeah.

Right. Right.

Amy K

I've been through a kind of a mountain of design trend articles and you know in the blogosphere and all of that. And I thought we'd kick around what's being reported you know in the wider world of design, not just paint color, going forward into 2025. So why don't we start with you went to some design show in London in the fall, right?

Amy W

I was at Decorex in the fall with my partner, Sarah, who is also my daughter, and had not been to Decorex before. It was a great show in the west side of London. And what kind of blew my mind was how much pink and green there was. It was like a kind of pink and green pastel fever dream.

And I was kind of shocked by that. And I still haven't really processed and tried to figure out why and what was going on there. It may have been the nature of the manufacturers. You know I'm mostly going and looking at fabric, a little bit of tile.

But you know my sense is that the way trends work is they go from runway to the fabric design houses, from the fabric design houses to the furniture makers, and then from the furniture makers into our homes and into the magazines a year after that. And so I often find that looking at the fabric houses is really where you see emerging color schemes.

Many, many of the smaller manufacturers who were showing at DecorX were block printers, you know screen printers that kind of very sweet English country look. And so there's a part of me that wonders if it's that context that created that plethora of pink and green or whether that's really something coming.

Amy K

But in any case, after a while, I grew weary of it, all quite charming, but didn't feel applicable or useful to me, really, in many ways.

Would you say that they were predominantly pastel? They were that light, that white? Or do they really range in some muted pinks and muddy brown pinks and our old-fashioned millennial pink?

Amy W

There was what I would call like a clay pink and a sage green. So I would say it ranged from that into sort of peachy terracotta pinks, like stone pink and green marble, things like that. And it was largely shown with browns, beiges, creams - warm neutrals, a little bit of olive green, things like that.

But yeah, there were no bold, shocking. Yeah, I guess that's it. I guess everything was lovely. It was all lovely. And to me, when everything is lovely, it's like forget about. Forgettable. It's sort of sort of a yawn.

Amy K

You know I guess I like to go to a show and see something that kind of freaks me out a little bit and maybe makes me think it's ugly. And then I start to think about that color in new ways.

Yeah, that's interesting you're saying that because I think back to the interview I did with the design writer, Sophie Donaldson. And she had just come back from K-Biz, the Kitchen and Bath show right before we spoke. And when I said, "Well, what was there, what was new?" She said there were all of these shocking colors for appliances.

And you know in her opinion, the purpose of coming out with colors like that is to sort of shock, excite you, and have you think about colors and kitchen appliances in a different way. It really wasn't about coming out with, "Gee, that's so pretty. I'll take two and another one for my client." So that's interesting you saying that and thinking that you also want a little bit of shock and surprise when you see them come out with what's supposedly new and happening right then.

Amy W

Yeah, I was not shocked by anything I saw in London, not in the showrooms, not in the Design Center, not at Decorex, and not on Pimlico Road, where we spent a day popping in and out of design studios. No shocking combinations and no shocking singular colors.

Amy K

We might have talked about this offline or I remember like one or two years ago on the podcast, I asked you if you had been reading a lot about color drenching being the “it” idea, and you hadn't come across it yet. So that continues to be a thing. But what's really fascinating to me is that Ruth Mottershead, if I'm pronouncing her name right, the creative director over at Little Greene, I think it was she who decided to come up with a newer concept called Double Drenching.

And she started writing about this in this fall. I mean, she just made it up, dammit. And within one or two weeks, I'm not kidding. I was being contacted by Real Simple, Living Etc., whomever, all the online design folks who come to me for comments. And it's like, "Gee whiz, folks.

Just because she said it, it doesn’t mean it's real, it's one person's idea." You know it just made me think about, it's so unrelated, but it made me think about going to a graduation at a university when the speaker comes up and says, "One person can change the future, can make a difference in the life of everyone." And of course, you know, again, you know that's about world peace and climate change.

But in the world of interior design, here's just one person who came up with this term, double drenching. And now it's so out there, they don't stop writing about it. And I’ve got to tell you, she has written what it is. Others have written what it is, and I still don't even get it. Here's what I think it is. You pick a hue, like blue, and instead of varying up the chromaticity or the value of all the blues you use in the room, you pick blues of different undertones.

And they're of equal strengths. They're equal chroma. And you use them all over a space. And still, the whole room is blue, but it's all these different blues and you're hearing this from a person who often loves to dip a toe into clashing. They are often really clashing. I have seen the pictures that they have put forward, and I don't like it.

And I say, "Why?" Again, you know it’s a marketing person's idea. It was almost like an experiment, a thought experiment to see if someone could make up a new term and would it take off? And the speed at which it did take off just speaks to how many online venues there are for design-oriented content and how they're so desperate to write about something new because it took off in a second.

Amy W

Wow. That's interesting. You know it's interesting because I saw in our show notes prior to coming on today with you this notion of double drenching, this term, which I had not heard of. And what I was thinking about was, OK, so what's next? What might this mean? And what could I see coming next?

Amy K

Amy W

And it seems to me that the drenching trend has allowed people to shift away from this notion that trim has to be white or off-white.

Amy clapping. Amy clapping.

I know, I know, I know. Sarah's clapping somewhere too. Sarah's a big proponent of drenching and does it with a lot of her clients. And what occurs to me is that what comes next is not staying in the same general hue but going someplace totally different on the hue circle.

Amy K

Staying with a similar value and chroma, but pivoting around the color wheel and possibly putting you know one of these smoky purples on the wall and then putting a smoky teal on the trim.

Well, that's kind of my attitude often for exteriors being a person who tries to steer clear from white and off-white, nothing colors as trim.

But in fact, to have a color that's different. I mean, they've got to work together somehow. You've got to know enough about colors to put together two disparate colors well. I think it could be good. You know I just had this client in California. I think I sent you some of her materials. She's the one who she has this Emma Shipley fabric of elephants for her sofa.

The background is a plum. Highly saturated. This fabric is purple with deep reds, orange, burnt orange, muddy pinks, greens. It is just absolutely wild and where one might hope that that sofa would be the diva in the room. In fact, she wanted the room to be a kaleidoscope.

And in her inspiration pictures she sent me were rooms that were deep red with green trim, all clear, chromatic, clear colors, not muted colors. Rooms with different ceiling, different trim color. I mean, personally speaking, way too much for me. And I actually did try to impress upon her that the more you had multiple colors all over the room, not just on the walls the less the sofa would be the diva.

She wanted different walls to be different colors and the trim to yet a different color and the ceiling to be a different color again. It went on and on and on. And I am absolutely shocked that I was able to get her to back off from that because if she hadn't ended her questionnaire by saying, "I'm a maximalist at heart.

but I don't want it to look like a circus." And I was like, "Phew, okay. Now I know the word to use." “Circus”. Let's expand out a little bit to interior design and talk a little bit about what you're seeing, what you're liking, what you think is here to stay.

Amy W

Amy K

I kind of want to start with Zellige tiles. When I was thinking about redoing my primary bathroom about 10 years ago, which I didn't end up doing, the tile du jour were cement tiles. Also from Morocco, amongst other places.

 Encaustic?

Yeah. You know, beautiful patterns, great colors from southern places in the world. I'm really into ethnic kinds of patterns, and so it really spoke to me.

I ended up not doing that bathroom then. And I was so happy that I didn't do it  and use them because I would have been stuck with cement tiles which are out of style now. And you know it's that perennial question of you love something not just because it's new, but because maybe you've never seen that before, or that hasn't been available before, and you're so in love with it.

And we all know it dates. These hard finishes can point to a specific time in the lifeline of your life, your home, your bathroom, and say exactly within a year or two of when you did it. And so I think about that in terms of the zellige because they are still going strong. It's definitely five years now, and they don't seem to be going away. The colors they come in are so extraordinary.

Every time I see, be it a bathroom or a backsplash that are these browny deep reds or these incredible yellows. I just go crazy. I think they're so incredibly beautiful. And I just close my eyes and I think, "Okay. What if you put it in today? What would you think about it seven years from now?" And it's a tough one because it's like an entrenched trend, but you still know it won't be here forever.

Amy W

I think they're beautiful, but I would be afraid to use them. What do you think?

Right. So here's what I'll say about that. I had a client, that house I worked on in Maine who really, really wanted orange in her shower. And this is a person who loved orange tile. Love, love, loved orange, loves the color. The tile had that look to it. But my feeling is if you love a color so deeply or you love a material so deeply that it will be trend-proof.

Will it be trend-proof for resale? Probably not. But if you're planning on staying… You know in 2004, I put in hand-cut mixed-colored mosaic glass from oceanside glass tile into my kitchen in Florida. And it was a mix of blues and creams and ambers.

And yeah, you know I'd still put that up in my laundry room. I wouldn't put it in my kitchen necessarily, but I loved those colors. I love that material. To me, it might feel dated to some people, but to me, it's just unequivocally gorgeous. So I think if you find something truly beautiful and it excites you and it maybe reminds you of a place you visited, you know like the Tadelakt.

Tadelakt, those finishes that we saw in our hotel rooms in Morocco. I mean, you know wow. How could anybody ever get tired? And to some extent, those things are classic. I mean, real zellige (zelij) tiles and real encaustic tiles, even though we hadn't seen them in the marketplace here in the US, that stuff had been around in other countries you know for eons, eons.

Amy K

Amy W

So I think in that regard, some of these things are timeless.

You know, for something to be classic and timeless in another culture far away, it's  interesting to know, but I don't think it affects ….I guess I'm coming back to resale value.

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. The general consensus around something may not be the way a specific individual who chooses that material for their home feels about it.

Amy K

Yeah. Yeah. I remember probably two years ago, , there's a Great Barrington in the Berkshires-based interior designer. Lovely lady does nice work, Jess Cooney. And she posted a bathroom she had done. I think it was for a client in the Berkshires. And it was mosaic tile, those tiny three-quarter of an inch squares, mosaic.

And it was the most intense teal blue. It was an enormous, enormous shower. Three walls of it. And I gasped because I loved the color. And I've always loved tiny mosaic tiles. And they really weren't in style then. And they're not even really in style or trending, I should say, now. And I commented. I said, "Oh, I'm so blown away by this, Jess.

Amy W

I mean, you did something gorgeous that you know isn't on Instagram, but it's something that hopefully you and certainly your client love. And this bathroom just blows me away. And you know she wrote back and said, "Oh, I know I love them too." And I would do that. I would almost do something like that before I would do a zellige. I'm going to have to think about why. I don't know. You know sometimes the color just carries it.

Well, that's what I was saying about this orange bathroom in Maine, you know the orange shower.

Amy K

It's not the whole bathroom, folks. It's just the shower. I think if somebody is really in love with a color that it will carry and hold its belovedness throughout time, regardless of what the format of the material is.

Yeah. Yeah. The power of color. Absolutely.

Staying on the topic of tiles, I think it's really interesting how the past maybe four years or so, we started seeing really a lot of checkerboard floors, tiled floors, or painted stenciled checkerboard wood floors. Usually in cream and another color, cream and black. Or the classic black and white. It could be marble. They were big  squares, a foot squares, right?

And this past year, I'm seeing a lot of checkerboard tiles patterns on bathroom walls.. So I'm talking like black and cream, black and putty, other colors, also even on kitchen backsaplshes. And boy, that is like pop art. I mean, because, of course, the smaller the scale, the busier the impact is.

Amy W

Amy K

Amy W

And from what I could tell from these photos, these were four, five, or six-inch squares in a checkerboard in a shower, or on a backsplash. And they're dizzying.

I was just going to say that's giving me a seizure just thinking about it, honestly. I love checkerboard.

I love checkerboard. Me too. Me too. I love them on the floors. I wouldn't do that.

But here's what I will say about that.

For me, the way I love to see a checkerboard done, the way I would do it, the way I have done it is a very tonal, close, low contrast 2 colors. The one I did here in Northampton was sort of a creamy off-white and a golden amber color to kind of create this warm, glowy, you know traditional Victorian house kitchen.

Amy K

I'm also seeing more tile-covered fireplace surrounds. And I think that's really, really fun.

So having gone through a whole bunch of different articles about what others think are trending…. Well, actually, Amy, let me start by asking you. Instead of just running through these, which I will anyway, is there anything that you've noticed in your just being out there in the world, dealing with your clients, dealing with what you read online, see in magazines, any things that you think are big, hot, new things for next year.

Amy W

          Amy K

Wallpaper, wallpaper, wallpaper? Absolutely wallpaper.

Okay. So first of all, before I read all of these things, people are talking about, could they please stop referring to greens as earthy greens? I feel like the people who write all of this design content, there's so many buzzwords now, and they're all the same, and people just use the same word over and over again.

Now, to me, if something's earthy, it's got browns in it. So are they talking about browny greens? No, they're not. Oh, also, deep. All right. Deep I'll take for dark. Sure. Rich. Come on now. Rich means nothing. You go back, take a look at what you read online, and see how many people use the word rich to describe colors. Are they talking about highly chromatic saturated colors?

Maybe, maybe not. It's just they're blah, blah, blah words. And so I'm picking up on this newest blah, blah, blah word or term, which is earthy greens because folks, greens are usually not earthy. Period The end. Okay. So for the folks who can afford such things and have the space for it, second kitchens, also known as sculleries and butler pantries, they do seem to be all the rage.

Amy W

I have one client who is putting one into a renovated and updated 1820s house. But otherwise, I don't think I've had any clients who are putting those in. How about you?

Yeah. I've had a number of pantries. One kind of scullery mudroom laundry room combo, which is actually almost bigger than the kitchen itself, which I find fascinating.

Amy K

Amy W

Amy K

Kind of back of the house, front of the house, if you will. I had a client.

Amy, sorry. I just want to make a distinction. Not a pantry, not just a pantry that holds your food.

No, no, no. I know. No. This is a room that has sinks and counters where you can have all of your mess. Yep.

Yeah. Okay.

Amy W

           Amy K

           Amy W

There’s an extra dishwasher, laundry machines, not one sink, but two sinks, you know a big laundry sink and a scrubbing up potting sink. These rooms are often accessible to the outdoors. So it's where you come into the house and leave your muddy boots and maybe wash your hands from the garden, maybe cut flowers and arrange them.

Right. Right.

Oh, definitely.

37:42

Definitely mudroom laundry room combos. Definitely. This is more about a second kitchen. Yeah. So the one I'm referring to has the laundry mudroom and the scullery next door. So it all kind of flows into the same space. All the cabinetry has done the same in these two spaces. They are different than the kitchen and put together. I think these two rooms are actually larger than the kitchen.

And there was a house that I worked on. I mostly did the exterior finishes for this particular house in New Hampshire, but they were putting in a full-on 2nd kitchen. They were having the so-called dirty kitchen and the clean kitchen so that this woman could make the mess and do the cooking and still entertain in the kitchen. Because let's face it, that's where everybody hangs out is in the kitchen.

Amy K

Also, something that's been around for a bunch of years and it is not going away. And this, again, is for a certain echelon of folks. Kitchen counters that are not quartz. They are not man-made. They are natural stone with wild, colorful veining. We've seen those marbles now that have purple veining, violet veining, turquoise veining, charcoal, black and white veining.

I mean, I think they're exquisite. It's a good three, four years easy that these have been kind of on the rise, getting bigger and bigger. I mean, it's a whole different maintenance situation when you're dealing with natural stone than with quartz. And And please make sure that they’re the only diva in your kitchen. Because if you've got a lot of other stuff going on, I think your head could explode.

           Amy W

I mean, that's a very overstimulating space. But they are very colorful stones. I believe these marbles are extremely expensive, so they're not for everyone's pocketbooks. But I mean, I'm really still seeing a lot of that, really a lot of that.

I first saw that purple veined marble in a waterworks showroom at the Boston Design Center a couple of years ago.

Amy K

I would think that despite how easily marble etches, and then if you go for a version that's not polished, it's honed, which is even more porous, it will lead to even more staining and etching. If you've got a wild pattern in your marble, maybe the upside is it really camouflages all of the wear and tear and patina that your marble will get after years you know unless you've got a little servant cleaning up after you.

Amy W

Amy K

Somebody running after you to mop up the lemon juice. I think it's for people who only make reservations. They don't actually make food.

I was just reading about fabric-covered light fixtures in a kitchen, and I thought, "Wow, how impractical!” You know my go-to is tomato sauce flying through the air. Maybe I think that because there's two dots of tomato sauce on my ceiling waiting to be painted over.

Amy W

Amy K

Amy W

It seems very impractical. I just read about it in an article. I don't know. Have you seen it?

I can't, for the life of me, imagine it. I mean, I'm a person who tries to dissuade my clients from using clear glass in a kitchen you know for light fixtures. I'm always looking for a little bit of antiquing, a little bubble, a little crackle, a little cloudy, a little milky. Yeah. Something.

Seeded!

Yeah, exactly. Seeded glass to kind of hide the flying sauce.

          Amy K

But yeah, fabric. I don't know. That's just for the rich and famous, I'm afraid. You know, actually, you can do that if you've got a clean kitchen and a dirty kitchen. If your tomato sauce was in the dirty kitchen, you could have all the fabric you want.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the other thing  is I look to have milk glass or seeded glass or something because I find the glare from bulbs, exposed bulbs, be it in my bathroom, be it anywhere terrible.

I find that really quite disturbing. No. Let's see what else. In Elle Decor, they polled 15 interior designers, and many said living rooms are being used differently now. They're referring to more formal living rooms now, but also ones that prioritize entertaining and not technology.

Amy W

And again, this is for people who have the space to have perhaps a media room where they're not watching TV in there. It's more about bar carts and multiple seating vignettes, fireplaces, well, that you either have or you don't. And not having a living room centered on a TV.

I'm all for it. From a decorating standpoint, I think what's so darn difficult is decorating around a TV.

You know when the TV is in the room, the TV is the diva, you know in terms of function. TV is a functional diva and an aesthetic nightmare for me, personally. You know TVs over the fireplace, just shoot me now. You know TVs propped up in the corners so that you can see them from everywhere. Oh, my God.

It makes me think about possible social backlash. You know I think a couple of things have happened. One is I think people socialize a little more at home, possibly as a result of COVID. Everybody got stuck at home. And yeah, we all wanted to be back out again, but I think that there is a certain amount of comfort many of us derived from being home during the pandemic. I think an awful lot of people spent an awful lot of money on their homes during the pandemic.

I think a lot of disposable income went from travel and restaurants and got plowed into home design, for sure. We were all swamped and busy as all get out. And so people are having people in more. You know and I think it may also be a backlash of an over-screened existence. You know So many screens. We've got our phones with us constantly. We're watching the news on the subway.

Amy K

You know I mean, good Lord, people have internet on their refrigerators, right? I mean, is that still even a thing? That was a thing a while ago. You know I love that this is a trend. And so I think as you know the boomers age and you know even the millennials are getting older, and you know maybe we've got more room to play around with the spaces in our house and start to use them for different things.

There's been a mention about curves not going anywhere.

And that's interesting because think about all of the curvy sofas, curving sofas, round side tables and coffee tables. But I'm really thinking about so much upholstered seating being curved. You know Sometimes they allude to a deco sensibility or sometimes something else. But they seem to really still be out there and really hot.

It's funny. I like circles, but I'm not a curved sofa person. I don't personally gravitate towards it at all. I'm into squares, Amy. I like square rooms. I like angles and things like that. So these curved sofas don't really turn me on, but they are really popular. And it's been a bunch of years now that I'm still seeing it in the magazines.

Amy W

Amy K

Amy W

Well, I think what's interesting is that we started with the curved sofas inwhat I call teddy bear upholstery coming out of the pandemic.

Shearling!

Yeah. Shearling chairs. You know I think everybody was looking for comfort, extreme. And so what I'm seeing is that the shearling and that whole teddy bear extreme look has waned, but the curved sofa situation has not gone away.

We have maintained that. I do think that a curved sofa can be a problem solver in a tricky space. I think it is a way to get a little bit of the function of a sectional without the size and clunky commitment of a sectional. I mean, when you think about a sectional, you know it's a nice angular array of seating.

And I think you can almost replicate that with something with a little bit of a curve to it. But you're kind of squeezing out a similar function, conversationally speaking. Have I specified a curved sofa? No, not. I have not done that. Do I like the look? Yeah, it's okay. Do I think it solves some problems? Yes. Absolutely. Would I have one in my own house?

Amy K

Probably not.

Okay. Let's touch on exteriors before we go. So I would say that besides my endless fascination with the ever-growing trend of trim matching the body color of a house, I would say this past year and going forward is still about white and off-white houses. I think that's really hot out there.

There's the third annual national survey conducted by the Harris Poll people on behalf of one-siding company. And homeowners reaffirmed off-white and cream are the most popular siding colors. After that, white, then light brown, light gray, medium blue. That's what came out of that particular poll. From fixer.com who has has come onto the scene in the last few years.

Another website about DIY and home building and renovating. Okay. They polled designers who said the most popular color for homebuyers is going to be off-white. Again, off-white. After that, natural wood. Then they say dark gray, natural stone. Obviously, some of these are fixed materials. Then taupe, light gray, black, navy blue.

Look at that navy blue only at 13%. It's been so hot. 10%, say sage green, and then it finishes with 2% red brick. So in light of your work with a major player in the siding world, in terms of what you have pointed them towards, what you've heard from them is selling, what you see yourself out there.

Amy W

What's your two cents on siding colors, no matter what the siding's made out of? Paint, hardie board, vinyl, whatever.

Since 2021, I have been doing color development for a major manufacturer of exterior building materials. I've worked with their stone cladding department. I've worked to develop colors for roofing. And the majority of work I've done for them is developing a color plan for vinyl siding.

So this is one of the big three companies in the country. And so I have access to a lot of sales data, which is interesting. And I would say that none of this is surprising to me. One thing I would like to say is that the all-side survey seems to have asked homeowners for preferred colors. The Fixer Survey asked designers about home buyers.

And I see those as two very different sets of data. I make a distinction. Because when you ask homeowners how they feel about their own house, it's very different than asking designers how they feel about resale. You and I know as designers that when we're talking to clients about resale, we're obviously going to take a more conservative path.

So I actually think that the all-side data is probably more reliable than the fixer data. I think the fixer data is skewed by asking designers about home buyers. So all that said, if you're residing your house for yourself because it's your forever house and you're going to stay there, it's very different than talking to a designer about if you're residing your house because you're about to put it on the market.

So I would tend to agree. If you're about to reside your house so that you can sell it, then absolutely off-white /cream makes total sense. And I'd say that top amount of data, you know those top spots in both surveys are analogous, and that makes complete sense to me.

I think what's really interesting is that the All Side Survey really sticks with light brown and  light gray as kind of in third and fourth place. Whereas you know the designers are going for the dark gray and they're going for the black and they're going for the navy blue. So here's what we've done, just to let you know what we've done.

Because white is such a great seller and because I'm so not crazy about bright white anything, as you well know, what I've done is I've developed more toned whites. So what we've done is we've broadened the range of whites that are available that live between the bright white and the light gray or the bright white and the beige.

We've left the cream kind of where it is, but I've brought in more toned whites into the collection.

What I have done for this company is introduce some more nuanced beiges, some more nuanced grays, things that don't necessarily read like beige, maybe a grayish-green, maybe you know a complex beige, some more complex neutrals. You and I talk about complex neutrals a lot. And those are the kinds of colors that we use when we have 3,000 colors to choose from.

And so I've tried to bring more of the kinds of colors I use in the universe of paint into the vinyl siding selection. Yeah. And blue is totally huge. Blue is totally huge. Yeah. And not just this medium blue, but dark blue. I mean Dark Blue has been one of the top sellers for the company I work for. And I'm talking dark.

They've been extremely popular, extremely popular. And where do I see things going? And I think that's what's really interesting. And also in my work with paint, I'm seeing more greens. More people are I kind of feel like yeah all the blue houses have run their course.

And I'm seeing people move into green. And it's interesting because you know as we see this you know we were talking about this cycle of how trends start on the runway and then go to the fabric mills and then go to the furniture manufacturers. I also see a similar trend flow, if you will, from residential interiors to residential exteriors.

So colors that were trending three or four years ago, you know greens really became a big thing a few years ago inside, and now they have shifted to outside. You know Prior to that, you know every darn color of the year was blue, what, five years ago. And then the blue house thing took off like crazy. You got to wonder, are we going to have red houses come back?

Amy K

I mean, yeah it'll be really interesting to see if the burgundies and deep, toned, reds come onto the scene.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of guessing not, but we shall see. We both love greens, and I've been lucky enough to have clients who've wanted green houses for quite a number of years. But I agree with you. There's more people open to it now, wanting it now, suggesting it now.

I do tons of work across the country. Probably more virtual work now than I do even locally where I live, but I live in the country in upstate New York. And so we've got older houses here, historical houses here. Kind of there's this dividing line where you've got this portion of people who are picking a green because they want to, using my words, settle it into the landscape, have it really meld with its landscape and disappear into the landscape.

And then there are people who right away will say not green. The whole exterior is green. I don't want it to just disappear out in the woods and the greenery around my house. So it's interesting how people ‘s  houses are in different settings, but they have a different point of view about why green will or won't work for them. A couple of months ago, I was in Sag Harbor, which is a beautiful historic town on the east end of Long Island in the Hamptons.

The houses are often from the 1600s in the village itself. And you would be surprised how many houses are white. Way more than I have seen in the past, way more than I've seen anywhere, so many whites. And then they are sprinkled with your black, off-black, and charcoal dark houses. So there's almost no contrasting trim in anyone's house there, which is interesting because that is also a historical look as well as a modern look.

It's amazing. So you know this is regional also and very much tied into the really old architecture or old for America architecture that's there. I mean I agree a stark cold white is not the way to paint any house. But tons of people still do want very bright white houses. I find it very off-putting, but there are tons of them and there are tons of them in Sag Harbor.

 Amy W

So it just depends who you are, what the light is, where you live, what your architecture is, and all. But I think if you have a little bit of tone, a little bit of something, something in your white paint, it makes for a softer look.

Are these all antique houses you're referring to? You know there's a reason for all this, and that's that people just weren't putting pigment in paints back then.

You know It was only really the wealthy who could afford to put colored pigments in their paints. That's why everything was painted white. That's why wainscoting was painted white because that was the cheap paint and they could put something above the chair rail or above the wainscoting. And that was what was decorative. And maybe they'd put wallpaper or a color, but the white wainscoting was easy to repaint and cheap.

Amy K

So that was really, I think, an aesthetic trend based in economics and materiality at the time, so.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's really hard to know in the Hamptons what percentage of homeowners are looking for historical accuracy, and what percentage of homeowners are very trend-driven, and that's why they're white. I don't know.

Amy W

I really feel like it's a mix of both because there's so many black, dark, gray, and off-black houses that I feel like it's all so trendy. Hard to know.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think i think it's easy to go with white. I think it's sort of a no-brainer. And frankly, I mean, it's probably just Benjamin Moore Ready Mix White, you know PM 01 or whatever it is.

Amy K

You know People say, "I want a White House," and the painter goes to Ben Moore and buys white, whatever.

Yeah. Super white.

So anywho, there you have it. 2025 Trend Report, Color of the Year, and other things happening in the design and decorating world that we live in. Great having you back, Amy.

Amy W

Amy K

You can be a guest visitor anytime.

Thank you. It's great to be back. And yeah, next time I'm out in the world, hopefully I will discover something that shocks me, upsets me, and makes for good listening.

That's it for now. Talk to you soon.