12 Outdated Living Room Trends to Leave Behind in 2025
Interior design trends are cyclical, including those in the living room. Once-popular color schemes and furniture styles often become outdated. Timeless design choices age better, so it’s essential to select classic elements and shapes. This allows you to update a few items to refresh your living room while keeping it stylish.
Consider these outdated living room trends and where design is headed to shape your style for the future.
Mirrored Furniture: A Fading Trend
Once a luxe staple, mirrored furniture is now seen as impractical and outdated. Its high-maintenance surfaces and dated aesthetic have made way for timeless, low-maintenance materials like wood.
Black and White Wallpaper: Fading from Trendy to Tired
Once a bold and stylish choice, black and white wallpaper is losing favor as interiors shift toward warmer, more organic aesthetics. The stark contrast can feel harsh and dated, with many opting for softer, nature-inspired hues or textured wall treatments instead. While still appealing in certain spaces, the trend is being replaced by more inviting and nuanced design elements.
Shiplap: A Trend in Transition
While shiplap remains a good architectural detail, its overuse has led to a shift in design preferences. Some are finding creative ways to modernize it, such as extending it to cathedral ceilings, using wider planks, or incorporating ledges and vertical installations. Others, are moving away from shiplap entirely, favoring alternatives like wall moldings for a fresh coat of paint.
Matching Furniture and Decor
Once a go-to for a cohesive look, matching furniture sets now feel generic and outdated. Modern design favors individuality, mixing pieces over time to create a more personal, inviting space. Instead of uniformity, opt for high-quality, unique items that blend style and function.
Overly Formal Living Rooms
Once designed for show rather than function, overly formal living rooms are becoming a thing of the past. Today’s spaces need to be comfortable and versatile, serving as study areas, entertainment hubs, and gathering spots.
Monochrome Living Rooms
If you haven’t heard, color is back – bold blues, earthy greens, dusky pink, and rich brown are all making their move in interior design. This is not to say that neutrals have disappeared, but they are taking a backseat to all of the colorful living room designs we are seeing right now. Designers and homeowners are being more adventurous in their use of color in the living room. Color drenching, painting all of the trim and walls (and sometimes the ceiling) the same color, and combining vibrant contrasting colors can all help to make a space appear fresh and fun.
If you like neutrals, do not worry; they will always look timeless. However, you can make your space look more modern by incorporating pops of color in decor like throw pillows and wall art to highlight your neutral space. These are simple to replace when you want to accent with a new color idea.
Fast Furniture
The move away from the trend of using fast furniture is one we whole-heartedly embrace. Fast furniture is inexpensive, mass-produced, and often disposable. This furniture often has a short lifespan because much of it is overly trendy and made from low-quality materials.
We completely understand that many people choose fast furniture because it is within their budget, but no one should feel obligated to buy fast furniture in order to fill up their space quickly. Instead, you should feel free to gradually curate your living room space with pieces that reflect your personality and style.
Visit antique and thrift stores to find good deals on quality items that you can upcycle. Save up for that gorgeous velvet sofa in the classic style that will last. There are always ways to find quality furniture that can become a feature of your living room if you want to try this approach.
Decorating Every Surface
Decorators and homeowners have the tendency to always feel that more is better, such that any available space is an area that needs to be filled. This can lead to a lack of a central or strong focal point, which can make a space look overwhelming and chaotic. This is not just an outdated design approach; it can create more maintenance and contribute to a culture of overconsumption.
Modern design approaches endeavor to leave space for the eye to rest. Rather than covering and filling space with generic decorations or non-functional furniture, many homeowners prefer to add a few pieces that have personal meaning or contribute to the room’s flow and purpose.
Open Floor Plans
Once a staple of modern design, open floor plans are becoming less desirable due to noise and lack of privacy. The shift toward semi-open layouts offers better-defined spaces while maintaining connectivity.
Wall-to-Wall Carpet
Wall-to-wall carpet, which was once the sign of a luxurious room, has fallen out of use in favor of harder and more durable floor coverings. For most interior designers, hardwood floors are the constant favorite, but there are other options now that include luxury vinyl plank, cork, and bamboo flooring. Cork and bamboo are especially good options because they are sustainable and have the texture and color of natural wood.
These hard floor options are more durable than carpet, but they lack the softness and comfort that people seek in their living spaces. This makes rugs an essential component of living room design. Make sure to select rugs that are the proper size for the space. Rugs must fit under all of the furniture, or at least the front legs, in a given space in order to function properly.
Heavy Window Coverings
Heavy or formal window coverings are becoming less popular in the current living room design landscape. Heavy window treatments reduce the amount of natural light in a space and contribute to an overly formal appearance.
Lighter and more open styles, such as neutral and sheer curtains, blinds, and shades, are often preferred in contemporary living room designs because they contribute to a relaxed and simple aesthetic. These also foster a stronger connection to the outdoors and allow in more natural light, both of which improve wellness and health.
Generic Gallery Walls
Gallery walls can be exciting and striking, but having a gallery wall filled with mass produced art just for the sake of covering the walls can lead to boring and underwhelming designs.
Modern design has taken a more considered approach to gallery walls. You should display pieces that are meaningful to you or that you genuinely enjoy. Options for gallery walls include pictures and paintings but also 3D objects like wall sculptures or objects. If you don’t have enough meaningful pieces, begin with just a small collection of items. You can always add to your display over time. You may need to rearrange your gallery items every time you add a new piece, so hang new elements only after carefully considering the addition.