HGTV's Erin Napier Has Entered A New Era, Here's How To Get The Look

Erin Napier has spent years renovating beautiful homes with her husband Ben on HGTV's hit show "Home Town." She is known for preserving the historic feel of older homes while updating them with a modern, cozy vibe. Napier keeps her spaces bright and airy, which is evident by her love of adding greenery wherever possible. And lately, Napier has been embracing the color scheme of a classic material in several of her interior designs: terra cotta.

The material of terra cotta is made of clay that has been fired and is often used for pottery and sculpting. Its warm, saturated color highlights how the material comes from the earth and is reminiscent of the fire used to construct it. With earth tones becoming increasingly popular, people have embraced terra cotta as a color – a textured orange hue with hints of red and brown.  Its alluring look makes it a great color choice for paint or when picking out furniture and other fixtures for around the house.

Napier posted throwback photos on Instagram of a French cottage she renovated years ago, and even she couldn't help but notice how heavily she relied on the terra cotta color. She captioned the photo carousel by saying, "I'm noticing now this must be our terra cotta era!" Included is a bedroom painted a terra cotta hue and brought to life with matching curtains. Napier even picked the color for the home's exterior by adding a table with an artistic terra cotta design on the porch.

A staple often used in Tuscan design, terra cotta has a familiar and comfortable feeling that would make a great addition to any space. It can be used in big and small ways –- for a feature wall or through decor around the house. Even if terra cotta is not the focal point of a room, it can make a great accent through pottery, like with the addition of a simple houseplant that lives in a traditional terra cotta clay pot. Erin Napier often includes it around the house as a paint color, but also in simple ways, like for the color scheme of kitchen utensils or a laundry room soap dispenser. One of the strongest advantages of terra cotta is that it pairs really well with so many other tones, making it a perfect choice of color for towels that would stand out in an all-white bathroom. 

Pairing terra cotta with neutral tones will really bring out the color's warmth, especially in a popular modern farmhouse or contemporary bohemian design aesthetic. To make a room feel more earthy without being overpowered by the color, you can create a beautiful style with terra cotta tiles in your home. A space can also be softened up with subtle inclusions of the warm tone in the form of an area rug or blanket for a pop of color. As a paint shade, it also complements Pantone's Mocha Mousse hue, which is their 2025 color of the year.

Terra cotta is versatile in the sense that it is appropriate for inside and outside the home. It's a fitting color for an outdoor shed or greenhouse, blending in perfectly with the trees and grass on the lawn. Erin Napier shared a quaint home project on Instagram where she selected terra cotta as the color for the exterior and even added a matching front porch swing in the same shade. For those who choose not to cover their entire exterior with the warm tone, consider it for painting window shutters or to spruce up a faded mailbox.

Napier loves to garden and heavily relies on her green thumb when designing homes. She often opts for classic terra cotta pots to show off beautiful plants and flowers. But there are also smaller-scale ways to include the orange-adjacent color in outdoor areas as crafts, like repurposing a terra cotta pot into a simple DIY birdhouse for your backyard. Terra cotta can also cover the ground, as many homeowners choose to install pavers of this color in patio spaces to create a picturesque outdoor area with rustic appeal.