Paint Color Trends for 2025
What Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore, and design leaders are saying about color in 2025 - and what's actually working in Lehigh Valley homes right now.
2025 Colors of the Year from the Industry Leaders
Every year, the major paint manufacturers announce a "Color of the Year" - a color that reflects broader cultural trends in design, architecture, fashion, and lifestyle. These announcements drive significant consumer interest and give professional painters and designers a framework for conversations with clients about where color is heading. Here's what the top brands chose for 2025 and why it matters for your home.
Sherwin-Williams: Quietude (SW 6212)
Sherwin-Williams chose Quietude for 2025 - a soft, muted blue-green that bridges nature, serenity, and modern interiors. It's a color that captures the broader cultural movement toward calm, intentional living spaces that serve as respites from overstimulating daily life.
Quietude reads as green in some light and blue in others - it has a quality of shifting with the time of day and the light source. In a living room with natural light, it feels like a morning mist. Under warm evening lighting, it deepens to a more substantive sage-teal. It pairs beautifully with warm wood tones, off-white trim, and natural linen textiles.
Best applications: Living rooms, primary bedrooms, home offices, accent walls in open-plan kitchens
Benjamin Moore: Cinnamon Slate (2113-40)
Benjamin Moore named Cinnamon Slate its Color of the Year for 2025 - a muted, complex blue-violet that sits at the intersection of gray, blue, and subtle purple. It's a deeply sophisticated color that appeals to the shift toward more intentional, personal interiors after years of safe, generic neutrals.
Cinnamon Slate isn't a bold statement color - it's a quiet one. It reads differently in different lights and creates a layered, almost textile quality on walls. It pairs well with warm metals like brass and copper, with warm wood tones, and with off-whites and creams that prevent it from reading as cold.
Best applications: Dining rooms, primary bedrooms, reading nooks, powder baths
The 5 Biggest Paint Color Trends of 2025
1. Earthy, Grounded Tones
The move toward earthy colors - warm terracottas, dusty sages, muted ochres, and clay tones - reflects a broader cultural desire to reconnect with nature in domestic spaces. These colors feel human, warm, and handmade rather than manufactured and sterile. They're rooted, which feels timely.
In Lehigh Valley homes, earthy tones are landing hardest in dining rooms, primary bedrooms, and entryways - spaces where warmth and presence matter most. These aren't the terracottas of the 1990s but more sophisticated, grayed-down versions that read as contemporary.
Key colors: SW Roycroft Adobe (SW 2233), BM Dusty Miller (2110-40), SW Worn Leather (SW 6114), BM Burnt Amber (2164-10)
2. Nature-Inspired Greens
Green is having a sustained multi-year moment and 2025 shows no signs of slowing it down. The range of greens trending this year spans from soft sage and gray-green to deep forest and botanical green - but they all share a common thread of naturalness and ease.
Sage green specifically has moved out of the accent wall category into full-room applications, especially in kitchens and living rooms. Deeper botanical greens are gaining ground in dining rooms and home offices. The unifying principle is that green brings the outside in without being a novelty or a commitment to a fleeting trend.
Key colors: SW Evergreens (SW 6444), BM Hunter Green (2041-10), SW Oyster Bay (SW 6206), BM Forest Green (2047-10), SW Rosemary (SW 6187)
3. Bold, Confident Accent Walls
The timid accent wall of the early 2010s - where someone painted one wall slightly darker than the others but nothing truly dramatic - is being replaced by genuinely bold statements. In 2025, if you're doing an accent wall, you're going all the way: deep navy, forest green, charcoal, terracotta, or saturated jewel tones.
The popularity of TikTok and Instagram home design content has accelerated homeowners' willingness to take risks with color. The accent wall is becoming a designed feature rather than a hedge. We're applying more truly dramatic accent walls in Lehigh Valley homes than ever before.
Key colors: SW Naval (SW 6244), BM Hale Navy (HC-154), BM Forest Green (2047-10), SW Caviar (SW 6990), BM Raspberry Mousse (2008-30)
4. The Return of Warm Neutrals
The cool gray wave that defined the 2010s has fully crested and receded. Homeowners across the Lehigh Valley are repainting cool grays in warm greiges, creamy off-whites, and soft warm taupes. Warm neutrals feel more livable, photograph more richly, and pair better with the warm wood furniture that has also made a strong comeback.
SW Agreeable Gray, BM Pale Oak, SW Accessible Beige, and BM White Dove are the colors we're applying most frequently right now as replacements for the cool grays of the previous decade. These colors are not boring - they're a sophisticated reassertion of warmth and human scale.
Key colors: SW Agreeable Gray (SW 7029), BM Pale Oak (OC-20), SW Accessible Beige (SW 7036), BM White Dove (OC-17), SW Shoji White (SW 7042)
5. Soft, Complex Blues
While navy blues have been popular for several years as accent and front door colors, 2025 is seeing softer, more complex blues gain traction on interior walls. These are not the sharp, definitive navies of recent years but medium-value blues with gray, green, or violet undertones that shift depending on the light.
These blues feel meditative and grounded - like the color of a lake at dusk rather than a clear sky at noon. They work beautifully in bedrooms and home offices, and as accent walls in living rooms where you want a presence without drama.
Key colors: BM Cinnamon Slate (2113-40), SW Quietude (SW 6212), BM Van Deusen Blue (HC-156), SW Meditative (SW 6227), BM Evening Dove (2128-40)
Trending: Off-White Kitchens
The all-white kitchen with stark white walls and white cabinetry is giving way to the warmer off-white kitchen - creamy walls, warm white cabinetry, aged brass hardware. The shift is subtle but significant. Stark whites are being replaced with creamy, lived-in whites that feel more organic and less institutional.
SW Alabaster and BM White Dove are the most requested kitchen wall colors we're applying in 2025, replacing the BM Chantilly Lace white-on-white kitchens that dominated the previous few years.
Key colors: SW Alabaster (SW 7008), BM White Dove (OC-17), SW Antique White (SW 6119), BM Linen White (912)
Color Trends in Lehigh Valley Homes Specifically
The Lehigh Valley is about 12-18 months behind coastal design markets in adopting color trends, which is actually good news for homeowners here. By the time a color becomes popular in the Lehigh Valley, it's been proven in thousands of homes elsewhere - you're getting a tested, documented trend rather than an untested risk.
Right now in Easton, Bethlehem, and Allentown, the most active trends we're seeing on jobs are:
Sage green kitchens and laundry rooms. Homeowners who have been watching the coastal design world for 2-3 years are now confident enough to commit to sage green in functional spaces. SW Oyster Bay and SW Rosemary are our two most requested kitchen colors in 2025.
Warm greige replacing cool gray throughout the whole house. This is the single largest category of repaint projects we're doing - whole-home repaints replacing cool gray palettes from 2012-2018 with warm, cohesive greige and off-white palettes. SW Agreeable Gray, BM Pale Oak, and SW Accessible Beige lead these projects.
Deep navy or black front doors. The bold front door trend has arrived fully in the Lehigh Valley. Nearly every exterior project we do includes a front door in BM Black Beauty, SW Naval, BM Hale Navy, or a deep forest green.
Primary bedrooms in soft, earthy tones. Pale sage greens and warm taupes have replaced the pale blues that dominated primary bedrooms for the previous decade. Homeowners want warmth and groundedness in the bedroom rather than coolness.
- Sage green is the most-requested single trend color in 2025
- Warm greige whole-home repaints have tripled since 2022
- Black front doors account for nearly 40% of exterior door projects
- Earthy accent walls (terracotta, clay, warm olive) are up significantly
- Cool grays are actively being replaced on interior repaints
- Two-tone kitchen cabinetry (lower cabinet in color, upper in white) is growing
- Ceiling color intentionality is new - more clients asking about ceiling color options
2025 Trends That Require a Professional Touch
Color Drenching
Color drenching - painting walls, ceiling, trim, and even doors the same color - is a bold design move gaining serious traction in 2025. When done well with the right color and the right room, it's stunning. When done wrong (wrong color, poor application, no contrast elements), it's suffocating. We can help you evaluate whether drenching will work in your specific space.
Deep Jewel Tones
Rich emeralds, sapphires, and garnets are on trend in 2025, particularly in dining rooms, libraries, and statement bedrooms. These colors photograph beautifully and feel luxurious when applied with precision. The risk is application quality - deep, saturated colors show every roller mark, brush stroke, and surface imperfection. Professional application is non-negotiable here.
Painted Ceilings
Painted ceilings in a color other than white are trending - whether matching the wall color for a cozy envelope effect or using a contrasting color for drama. This is one of the most impactful and least expensive design interventions available, but it requires careful color selection to avoid making the room feel oppressively low.
Paint Trend FAQ
Should I follow paint color trends or stick with timeless colors?
The best approach is to use trends to inform your choices without slavishly following them. A current, on-trend neutral like SW Agreeable Gray is simultaneously a timeless greige and a 2025 trend - it's both, which is why it's such a safe choice. Where trends are riskiest is in very trend-specific, saturated colors that have a clear expiration date. A deep sage green is much more timeless than, say, millennial pink was in 2017. Consider how long you plan to stay in the home and how much you enjoy repainting.
Is the Color of the Year actually worth using?
The Color of the Year is more useful as a signal of broader direction than as a prescriptive choice. If SW's Color of the Year is a muted blue-green, that tells you the market is moving toward cooler, nature-inspired palettes - which is actionable information even if you don't want that specific color on your walls. Think of it as a compass, not a mandate.
How do I know if a trendy color will work in my specific home?
The same principle applies regardless of how trendy a color is: test it in your actual space, under your actual lighting, against your actual fixed elements. A color that's trending nationally might not work in a specific north-facing room with dark wood floors and warm-toned furniture. Our color consultation process involves evaluating your specific context before making any recommendation - trend or otherwise.
What happened to the all-gray palette trend?
The cool gray palette that defined residential interiors from roughly 2012 to 2020 has run its course. It's not that gray is "wrong" - it's that the specific version of gray that was overused (cool, blue-toned, low-contrast) began to feel generic and cold. Warm grays and greiges have replaced them, and the industry's push toward warmer, earthier, more nature-connected palettes shows no signs of reversing.
Are bold colors like jewel tones risky for resale?
In the right application - a powder bath, a dining room, an accent wall - bold colors can actually enhance resale appeal by making a home feel well-designed rather than generic. The risk is applying them everywhere, or in rooms where buyers expect neutrality (primary bedroom, kitchen). A bold dining room in deep green or navy signals taste and intentionality. Bold saturated colors throughout every room signal personal taste that buyers have to mentally override.