The Top 31 Home Decor Trends of 2025

Health-driven paint choices, like mould-resistant paints, gain traction among DIY decorators

Selecting paint for your home is normally an aesthetic choice. But for a certain fraction of DIY decorators, it’s becoming a matter of health.

Americans spend approximately 90% of their time indoors, where concentrations of some pollutants can be 2–5 times higher than in outdoor environments. It’s also where you will find high concentrations of mold — the fungus that leaves unsightly stains on damp walls. This shift reflects one of the broader trends in health & wellness, where consumers are seeking healthier home environments through everyday products like paint and air filters.

As mold grows, it releases spores that can trigger nasal congestion, coughing, and wheezing. The same toxic spores exacerbate asthma, worsen skin problems, and they can even cause neurological problems.

Regular cleaning, good ventilation, and air filters can provide some relief from these problems. But many consumers are turning to a more permanent solution: mold-resistant paint.

These paints contain fungicides and mildewcides to prevent growth on painted surfaces. Some mold-resistant paints also contain moisture-controlling ingredients, allowing the underlying surface to breathe, which reduces moisture buildup.

While mold-resistant paints have been around for some time, they used to be somewhat ineffective and limited in color options. More recently, brands such as Zinsser have introduced new formulations that better resist mold, and last up to seven years without cracking or peeling. Many brands now offer hundreds of colors, too.

As a result, this niche is growing rapidly, with anti-mold paints expected to generate over $900 million by 2029.

Some companies experiment with marketing their brands in hotels and airports; they’re a way to get exposure to customers who will then try the brand at home. Gush paint, which sells wall paint designed to absorb pollutants, is using a similar approach: they landed a large health system as a customer, and painted many of its delivery rooms with their paint. Since the paint is pricier than other kinds, this is the kind of detail the hospital is likely to highlight to new moms—some of whom may decide they'd rather not bring their newborn home to a less-than-healthy home environment.

Demand for temporary wallpaper climbs as renter population outpaces homeowner population

The number of renters has grown three times faster than homeowners and the popularity of renter-friendly wallpaper highlights broader shifts reflected in recent shopping trends.

The average consumer spends over $200/mo on subscriptions for music, TV, fitness, and more. Even HP printer ink cartridges are available on a monthly basis, and Uber memberships are a fast-growing alternative to owning a car.

Thanks to rising mortgage interest rates, stagnant wages, and a desire to avoid being tied down, the number of people who rent has shot up over the past decade. Home decor companies are targeting this group with wallpaper that can be removed without a trace when required.

Often referred to as “renter-friendly” or “peel-and-stick”, the temporary wallpaper offers the aesthetic appeal of traditional decor, but without the permanence and cost. It’s also much easier to apply.

Homeowners and landlords increasingly favor SPC and LVP flooring due to their durability and soundproofing qualities

In cities like New York and San Francisco, many leases include a surprising clause: 80% of flooring should be carpeted. This rule is mostly to reduce noise, since carpets are vibration-absorbent, which is especially helpful in a more crowded dwelling like an apartment complex.

Carpets are falling in popularity, both for aesthetic reasons and due to concerns about allergies, so more people are buying uncarpeted floors. While hardwood flooring is still a default option, more and more homeowners and landlords are opting for new materials that will still absorb some sound. Popular options include stone plastic composite, or SPC flooring, and LVP flooring, aligning with the latest home improvement trends.

These are both dense and durable and can be bought with patterns that look like wood, stone, or other materials.

And not only are they long-lasting, but their scratch-resistant properties make them especially appealing to landlords, who get less wear and tear when tenants move in and out. Even when they are damaged, individual pieces can be removed and replaced without removing the entire floor.

Indoor doormat sales on the rise as growing urban population tries to replicate rural-style mudrooms

As more people move to cities, they’re starting to miss some amenities of cheaper land and lower density living, like the mudroom. Entryway tables and indoor doormats, both popular furniture trends, are a way to essentially create a mudroom for an apartment. In parallel, robot vacuums have also been on the rise, which makes any small amount of dirt more noticeable—especially since the robot’s sound and motion makes the cleaning process perceptible.

Norms around “no-shoes indoors” vary from country to country, but they also vary within countries, and, in the US, each home’s policy towards shoes can be hard for guests to figure out on their own. Many consumers say doormats are a subtle but effective way they signal this without having to explicitly tell guests to remove their shoes. Shoes-off norms have also catalyzed other trends, like grip socks and orthotic slippers (featured in Glimpse March 2021).

Another reason indoor doormats are rising is surprisingly because of inventory management issues. Doormats in general are a seasonal item, with higher sales in winter when more grime is getting tracked inside. But indoor doormats have much more consistent sales trends throughout the year. So one reason for their growth is that they're being rebranded from outdoor doormats so sellers don't miss the key season and end up stuck with inventory for almost another year.

Flooring trends tend to run in long cycles. Carpeting, which tends to obscure dirt in the short term but make it impossible to ignore (and hard to clean) in the long term, peaked in the 1970s with the rise of suburban homes and cheap synthetic fibers. Hardwood floors have been growing in popularity since then, especially in the last two decades, which has driven increased interest in doormats. While full-scale carpeting isn’t everyone’s first choice, a little bit of it, in the form of a doormat, goes a long way for many consumers.

Consumers seek out new ways to make homes quieter, following carpet’s decline over the 30 years

American homes are getting noisier as carpet usage has declined over the past several decades.

Wall-to-wall floor carpeting was common for much of the 20th century – it even started as a sign of luxury.

But as a growing percentage of Americans became more mobile, and many homeowners lived in their houses for shorter periods of time, they began to optimize more for the resale market than for comfort or personal preference.

This gave hardwood flooring the perfect in. It’s better for resale value, and cleanliness, and has, in recent times, grown into preference among the American population.

And as technology improves, hardwood synthetics like LVP and SPC flooring are bringing down prices.

Meanwhile, with the carpet industry struggling, the rug industry has been using a number of strategies to stay relevant. For one, the rug industry continues to support a common apartment lease clause – used in most NYC apartment leases, for example – which says that at least 80% of the floor must be covered in rugs in order to reduce sound. The rug industry has also created the washable rug category, tapping into consumer preferences shaped by recent retail trends, significantly reducing the cost of a rug with fewer trips to an expensive dry cleaner

At the same time, with carpets making their way out of homes, consumers are increasingly looking for ways to dampen sound. Some companies, like Woodupp, are incorporating sound-dampening elements into trending interior styles like fluted panels, and are successfully cashing in on this monumental change in American home layouts.

Businesses like casinos and Apple stores strategically use scents to enhance customer experience and reinforce brand memories – and now consumers are bringing hotel chain scents into their own homes

One of the world's biggest companies started as a scent company: Procter & Gamble originally focused on selling scented candles when they opened up shop in 1837.

Since then, the scent industry has become infinitely more complex, and large too. Givaudan, a Swiss company that sells fragrances and flavoring agents in bulk, did over $7B in revenue in 2020.

And they're not just used in end products—they're also an important part of the in-person experiences. Casinos, as well as Apple stores, use smells as cues to visitors because smell is so strongly associated with memories.

The interplay between smell and taste has long been known to businesses who have gone so far as to pump artificial smells into their restaurants in an attempt to make their food taste better.

Now, consumers are increasingly searching for scents from specific hotel chains. And in fact, hotels have started selling their own room scents.

While hotels are thought of as selling a good night's sleep, many are increasingly using their rooms as retail storefronts - Westin, for example, has sold $135M worth of bed-related accessories, including mattresses. Other hotels even offer to sell the artwork hanging on the walls. Staying at a hotel is a way to test-drive a more luxurious lifestyle for a few days, and sometimes people like certain parts enough to make them a regular routine instead of a vacation splurge.

The rise of washable rugs eliminates the usual trade-offs between stylish home decor and fear of damage from spills or pets

Normally, there’s a tradeoff between the enjoyment and social clout of nice home furnishings and the worry that they’ll get damaged. Washable rugs mean that a spilled drink doesn’t stop the party, and that a muddy dog doesn’t ruin the centerpiece of the living room.

Rugs are notoriously difficult to clean, and they’re often bigger than a home washing machine can handle. So a stained rug tends to get relegated to a less-used room, or thrown away altogether. Ruggable is a direct-to-consumer company that offers a two-piece rug; the top can be detached and washed separately from the rest, making it much more convenient to clean.

This focus on stain-proofing gives Ruggable, and other washable rug brands, a chance to lean into one of the strongest trends in social media: posts with cute pets or cute babies get clicks. Since pets and kids are two major sources of stains, it’s entirely legitimate that Ruggable’s 1.6M-follower strong Instagram account features plenty of dogs, cats, and tots – all of which get an above-average response on social media.

Ruggable, and similar brands, benefited from another external shift: direct-to-consumer mattress companies and furniture sites like Wayfair have normalized the practice of ordering home decor without seeing it in person first. Ruggable has also gotten a tailwind from the pandemic. In a normal year, over 30 million people move, but the pandemic led to a faster pace of relocation. When people move, they’re less likely to bring bulky, relatively low-value items like old rugs with them; Ruggable advertises accordingly, and one of their site’s top referrers is realtor.com.

Arch mirrors gain prominence as social media users seek unique, visually appealing backdrops for mirror selfies, driven by trends like outfit-of-the-day posts

Arch mirrors are at the intersection of one trend in social and a completely unexpected trend in search. They're an example of how brands can take over generic product terms, and force the makers of those products to rethink their marketing approach.

On social media, mirror selfies are popular, in part as a legacy from the days before front-facing cameras on phones, and in part because they create more ways to compose a photograph and its background. The fashion trend, outfit-of-the-day (OOTD), is another driver of interest in mirrors. Since social networks’ ranking algorithms reward consistent and frequent posting, OOTD-posters tend to have more visibility, which amplifies the trend. More flexible return policies also contribute to its popularity—now, outfits are sometimes bought for a single selfie, then returned for a full refund.

The rise of the mirror selfie makes social media mavens more conscious of the mirror itself—when they're confined to the format of Instagram or Snapchat, a unique mirror is a way to give a photo a distinctive frame.

Permanent Christmas lights are growing in popularity as a safer alternative to yearly rooftop installations

Roofing is the 4th most dangerous job in America, after logging, private pilots, and oil work.

And the statistics don’t even include consumers doing their own roofing work. 93% of Americans report celebrating Christmas and each year, millions of untrained consumers take to their roofs to install Christmas lights, leading to an estimated 9,000 emergency room visits, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Permanent Christmas light brands advertise that once the customer sets up their lights, they never have to take this risk again.

There’s also something incredibly strategic these brands are doing: they’re using permanent lights as a way to extend the seasonality of lighting purchases beyond the highly concentrated end-of-year buying cycle. And while it may seem like this doesn’t matter – the customer already bought the lights and they’re not buying again anytime soon – it’s not about the customer, it’s about marketing. Decorative lights get such a large portion of sales from visual marketing: driving around a neighborhood and seeing constant reminders of the product.

There’s also an element of status: It starts off with a small number of neighbors wanting to outdo one another. And once most of the neighborhood has them, the dynamic switches to a different one where if you don’t have them, you’re the odd one out.

It’s a similar dynamic to the oft-talked-about blue Apple iMessage bubbles. Consumers say it was first about standing out for being higher-status and then about not standing out for being lower-status.