And the color of the year announcements continue to roll in…. Earlier this month Sherwin Williams HGTV Home and Valspar both announced shades in the blue family, but Behr has shaken up the streak with a deep red color.

While blues and greens have been continuously popular the last few years for their reminiscence of nature and their ability to play well with many other colors, warmer and spicier tones have been gaining ground.  

Terra cotta and mustard shades were beginning to show up at the furniture trade markets even 3 years ago.  And Pantone has chosen coral, peach, and fuschia shades for their color of the year in recent history.  

So it should come as no surprise, that a deep oxblood shade is the Behr Color of the Year for 2025.  It makes for confusing headlines “Behr Color of the Year 2025 -  Rumors”… but “Rumors” is the name of the color!

Reds can be energetic, dramatic, cozy, or warm and welcoming.

They can be deployed in large swaths as wall paint, trim paint and cabinetry OR in subtler ways as part of a pattern in fabrics, wall coverings or rugs.

This warm shade was on the walls of the conference space where we made mozzarella during our Designhounds NYC tour of the SKS appliances test kitchen, and it appeared in a bedroom at the Kips Bay NYC Showhouse. 

This shade showed up in an English wallpaper (Soan Britain’s Palamore Blossom) in a display at this year’s Kitchen and Bath Show.
And we created this spectacular oversized bolster from a clients small rug for a primary bedroom featuring this shade.

I saw gorgeous English fabrics and embroidered wallpapers with a variety of shades of red at the Boston Design Center recently.

Here is an AI generated image of an imaginary kitchen with deep red cabinetry.  This demonstrates the warmth and inviting nature of this shade.

And here is a sneak preview of a library space we designed for a client with built-ins in a similar red (more pictures of this project coming soon!)

My own children’s nursery, many year ago, was decorated in an unprecedented color scheme of predominantly warm burgundy with cream and tan.  Way ahead of my time and, alas, not one picture of that spectacular space.

But no matter how you use it, a deep red shade can contribute tremendously to the emotional appeal of a room.

What do you think of this Color of the Year from Behr? Would you use it?