The best-selling non-neutral paint color in 31 U.S. states this year wasn't a trend-forecaster's darling. It was Hidden Gem, a smoky jade that Behr named its 2026 color of the year, according to Axios. People didn't just admire it on Pinterest. They bought it by the gallon and rolled it onto their walls.
Now the 2027 picks are in, and they point the same way. Behr chose Grounded, a mossy olive. Sherwin-Williams picked Celery. Valspar went with Cottage Door, a gray-blue; Dutch Boy with Deep Rooted, a sun-baked terracotta; Dulux with Soulful Sage, Homes & Gardens reports. Not one of them is white, gray or beige.
The Gray Era Is Losing Its Best Argument
For a decade, neutral walls had a hard-nosed business case: they sell houses. In a 2025 survey cited by Axios, 84% of real estate agents still recommended white, gray or beige interiors before a sale.
The data has moved out from under that advice. Zillow's 2026 paint study found sage green ranked first in every room it tested, adding about $1,035 to offers in a bedroom and $471 in a living room, per Moneywise's breakdown. A warm chocolate brown bedroom added $2,277. Pale blue living rooms added $1,723.
"Buyers today respond to homes with soul," says Amanda Pendleton, Zillow's home trends expert, "and paint is one of the easiest, most affordable ways to add personality and character to a space."
And increasingly, people aren't painting for the next buyer at all. Houzz's 2026 research found homeowners now prioritize designing for themselves over resale value, Axios notes. The safest color was always a bet on someone else's taste. Consumers are quietly withdrawing that bet.
Read the Vocabulary, Not Just the Swatches
Here's where this becomes useful beyond interior design. Paint companies spend a year of research on these picks, and the words they chose to sell them are as telling as the hues: Grounded. Deep Rooted. Soulful. Earth.
"Homeowners are gravitating toward warmth, color and personality," says Kayla Kratz, who leads color and design strategy at Behr. Sherwin-Williams' Ashley Banbury frames Celery as a move "toward hues that still provide comfort but also bring more freshness and personality into the home." Dutch Boy's Lisbeth Parada calls Deep Rooted "rich, grounding, and deeply human."
That's a readout of consumer mood, compiled by companies whose revenue depends on getting it right. The emotional brief is steadiness and warmth, with some individuality — not the frictionless, anonymous calm that defined the last decade of product and brand design.
One caveat worth holding onto: color forecasts are partly self-fulfilling. When every major paint brand pushes green, stores stock green and people buy green. But Hidden Gem's sales across 31 states show the demand wasn't just manufactured on a mood board.
"More Color" Is the Wrong Lesson
The easy misread is that brands should get louder. Zillow's study says otherwise. A red bathroom cut offers by about $7,971 compared with white. Blush pink knocked off roughly $6,013. Ochre yellow underperformed in every room.
The winners share a specific character: muted, warm and rooted in nature. Sage, olive, clay, chocolate, soft blue. These are colors that feel lived-in, not colors that shout. Consumers are rejecting sterility, not asking for spectacle.
Direct-to-consumer brands learned a version of this when they left their Instagram-only phase and hit physical shelves. Glossy documented how feminine-care brand Cora abandoned its white boxes and sans-serif type after discovering, in the words of its head of creative Andrea McCulloch, that "that logo would just disappear on the shelf." Vitruvi co-founder Sara Panton put it more bluntly: "Black and white minimalism and Scandinavian design are a little bit tired."
What once signaled modern and trustworthy now risks reading as generic — especially now that any AI tool can generate a clean sans-serif wordmark on a gray field in seconds.
What This Means
If your brand, packaging, storefront or website still runs on the gray-and-white default, the paint data is a cheap early warning. Three moves follow.
- Audit what "neutral" is costing you. Neutral used to mean safe. In a market where customers are actively choosing warmth and character at home, it increasingly means invisible. Put your packaging or homepage next to three competitors and ask honestly whether anyone could tell them apart.
- Add one grounded accent, not a rainbow. The evidence rewards muted, nature-based color and punishes saturated, loud choices. A single earthy accent — olive, clay, sage, deep blue — used consistently will do more than a full maximalist overhaul.
- Test it where customers actually see it. Cora's problem only showed up on a real shelf. Check color on a phone screen in daylight, on a printed bag, on the storefront at 5 p.m. Mood boards flatter every palette.
The paint industry just finished a year of research on what people want their daily surroundings to feel like. The answer is grounded, warm and personal. Brands that still look like 2016 will have a harder time feeling like 2027.
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