Benjamin Moore's 2025 Color Of The Year Is An Ode To Warmth, Comfort, And Ease

Paint is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to update your home. With countless color options available, from basic white walls to darker hues the experts say will be popular next year, and a wide variety of sheens, from matte to high gloss, making the right selection can feel like a daunting task. Nothing makes a room look worse than choosing the wrong paint color. Fortunately, color experts from popular brands like Pantone and HGTV Home release a color of the year that grounds an entire palette of coordinating hues. Using a color of the year pick along with one or several other complementary colors can make your entire home feel stylish and cohesive instead of outdated and disjointed. Benjamin Moore's 2025 color of the year, Cinnamon Slate, is an ode to the warmth, comfort, and ease many of us want to bring into our living spaces and our lives.

A dark and nuanced paint color that can help make a room feel cozy, Cinnamon Slate, and its complementary palette of colors like Sea Salt, Leather Saddle Brown, Ashwood Moss, and Paris Rain are all about the undertones. "These are colors that can't be defined as just red, green, violet, or gray," explained Benjamin Moore's color expert Arianna Barone in a video released during the announcement of the company's color of the year. She added that there is an intricacy to Cinnamon Slate, describing the color as "a delicate mix of heathered plum and velvety brown." Although it's a bold choice, the color skews neutral overall.

Designers pick the perfect shade of paint by considering a room's intended purpose, existing lighting, and the overall mood desired. Cinnamon Slate, and its coordinating colors, can look elegant yet bold in any room. It's an effect Benjamin Moore has dubbed "quietly colorful." The company's color expert Arianna Barone explained that due to the nuanced undertones, different accessories and approaches to lighting will drastically change the look of Cinnamon Slate on your walls. "If you wanted to bring out the plum undertones in Cinnamon Slate, I would consider pairing it with gold, wood tones, ambers, and golds," she said (via Benjamin Moore). But, if you prefer a more neutral look, she suggested opting for cooler lighting and accent colors.

Benjamin Moore isn't the only brand predicting that rich and playful paint colors are making their way back into 2025 home trends. The dated millennial gray trend seems to finally be yielding to richer brown colors. Pantone's color of the year for 2025 is Mocha Mousse, while the HGTV Home by Sherwin Williams color collection for 2025 features a refined brown called Nutshell. Popular designer and "Fixer Upper" star Joanna Gaines recently championed warm brown paints, releasing a woodsy brown with a green undertone called Wooded Acres as part of her Lakehouse Collection with Kilz. And, the experts at Zillow have chimed in, their research indicating that buyers will pay more for homes painted with dusky, dramatic colors and earth-toned bathrooms. It seems you can't go wrong with a hue like Cinnamon Slate for 2025.