The Modern Farmhouse Cabinet Trend That Will Become Outdated In 2025

Recent farmhouse decorating trends encouraged home decorators to pull all of the color out of their kitchen cabinets. In the wake of this trend, people painted their kitchen cabinets white and then outfitted them with black knobs or handles. During a time when just about everyone and their nephew wanted that sleek farmhouse vibe, the look made total sense. However, people can live without color for only so long as the recent color drenching trend proves, putting the outdated kitchen cabinet design of black hardware on white on the going-extinct list.

Indeed, according to Realtor.com, a full 71% of homeowners say that want, want, want more color in the kitchen. Realtor.com additionally suggests that a few key colors will dominate the space, with green, blue, and brown nabbing the three top spots in terms of popularity. (Brown, in fact, replaces white as the neutral of choice.) Fortunately for the colorfully inclined, there are lots of iterations of the more-color-please theme to choose from, and they are not limited to just those three colors. That said, even within the trio are plenty of different shades, allowing home decorators to personalize their kitchen cabinets according to their tastes. This makes the leap away from black and white a very vibrant and individual one.

Web searches in around 2024 showed the first signs that people were growing tired of the farmhouse aesthetic, according to Zillow. The style came into popularity in around 2016. It has gotten a real boost because of reality TV stars like Chip and Joanna Gaines, who embrace the style in their work. However, after almost a decade of shiplap walls, white kitchen cupboards with black knobs, and plenty of open spaces, the look has begun to grate on some.

While the neutral colors that dominated the style were once embraced, being surrounded by too many gray or white cupboards for too long may be making homeowners feel a little blue. What once made a kitchen look sleek and cozy has started to look a bit cookie cutter, especially for people who want to show off more individuality and color in their spaces. And it may also be the case that the farmhouse look, well, just looks out of place in some settings. Out in the country, farmhouse style is absolutely the cat's meow. In urban settings, maybe not so much. All of these factors have influenced people's design choices, and because of this, more and more people have started to move away from the plainness of the style in their cupboard design.

In 2025, iterations of these popular and mood-lifting colors tend to be deep and vibrant, and in many cases, retro even. (Think 1950s poppy red and teal and you've got the vibe.) As for specific colors, olive green is showing up in many kitchens this year. As for blue, it's darker, like cobalt blue, instead of teal (in the homes that aren't going for a retro vibe). You may find this shade dominating kitchen cabinet trends in 2026.

If you've ever experienced an uplift in mood after moving into a space filled with color, it wasn't just your imagination. Our brains respond favorably to color — so much so that we get a big hit of dopamine in the process. That's one of the reasons why you feel good when you look at art. And as a bonus, coating your cabinets with reds, blues, greens, and other bright colors doesn't just make you happy. Those hues can actually enhance other sensory experiences, including augmenting the taste of food and wine. 

The fact that blue and green are heavily trending this year is not such a surprise. Some, if not most of these associations, are unconscious. They hit us in a deep place. For example, the greens remind us of being surrounded by the calm beauty of trees and the blues recapture memories of summer vacations near the lake. More practically, these colors also tend to create a dramatic backdrop for fixtures made of brass or gold. All of this encourages home decorators to consider how the color of their cabinets might influence style choices in other parts of their kitchens' decor schemes as well.