If you’ve been craving personality, color, and customization in your home, 2025 is your year. Home decorating trends have moved away from barren and boring and now embrace tons of bespoke options, including deep colors, personalization, and creative spaces that are authentically you.
Whether living in your forever home or nesting in temporary military housing, there are ways to incorporate on-trend decor themes. Some trends might even work for both.
As a temporary tenant, you know the multi-purpose powers of a beautiful room-sized rug. It can instantly change the look and feel of a room, whether you need it to literally warm up the space or add interest and color against bland, military housing shades of beige on the wall.
A statement rug is versatile, regardless of what price point you purchase. Inexpensive rugs can temporarily cover abused hardwood floors in a rental house and easily be discarded after the three-year PCS cycle. On the other hand, an investment rug can see you through multiple moves and weather all kinds of life changes, like kids, pets, and dirty boots.
Pick colors and patterns you love and embrace one of 2025’s easiest-to-implement home decor trends. And remember, it's really hard to buy a rug that's too big—usually people buy them too small. If the existing flooring is horrible, leaving just a foot perimeter of the exposed floor is fine for transient living.
One of the best ways to hide large, boring walls in military and rental housing is to create a gallery wall. Traditionally, these walls showcase carefully curated frames and photos neatly lined in geometric patterns, which definitely gets the job done. But, in 2025, whimsy and fun are taking over and dressing up gallery walls by adding interesting artwork, small shelves of collections of personal items, and a variety of frames with different shapes, colors, and sizes.
Now is the time to showcase trinkets you’ve picked up during military travels or to thrift and revive a collection of castaway wall frames. You can go really quirky and simply hang a frame on the wall without glass or matting, highlighting something special, like an antique photo, in the middle of the empty space.
Renting an older home with interesting or awkward spaces ripe for a reading nook transformation is not unusual. Depending on the location, you can instantly insert cozy by adding another of 2025’s decor trends: moody paint (burgundy, plum, or deep blue) or patterned temporary wallpaper. Rich colors and decadent patterns don’t look so overwhelming in small spaces.
You definitely need a comfy chair or loveseat with multiple blankets. A small floor or hung shelf is perfect for displaying your favorite volumes, and a side table is a necessity for mugs of warm coffee. Don’t forget the perfect floor lamp! A theme, like world travels or coastal beachy, may also inspire you.
The plant popularity explosion born from the pandemic years is steadfast. Plants are perfect accents for adding life and vibrancy to a room, but in 2025, they’re taking a bigger step forward and actually framing or becoming a part of the structure of a room, which can be very helpful in a rental house without defined spaces.
Large plants in any style pots you prefer can outline and highlight an area that needs definition, like filling in too-wide archways or showing off an intricate fireplace during the off-season. Maybe the eat-in kitchen needs plants to frame a boring set of windows, bringing the outside in.
Read Military Housing: Make it your Own! for more tips on customizing a temporary house.
Although the color combos are endless, you probably think of black and white when it comes to checkered floor tiles. And why not? They’re a classic example of “everything old is new again.” You may think of them as retro, but they can also fit a traditional style home and contemporary leaning homes.
If you’re worried about committing to such a strong visual statement for a long time, consider shopping for removable peel-and-stick floor tiles. Of course, they don’t hold up as well as professionally installed floors, but you’ll get the feel of the pattern without the commitment.
Staying with the what’s old is new again theme, brick backsplashes are taking over in various kitchen styles, from traditional to rustic and contemporary. The colors and texture lend a warming trend to the room visually and with texture. The brick veneers come in many colors, from white to classic brick red. If you have always wanted the old-world kitchen look, a brick backsplash might scratch that itch, with many sizes and styles to choose from.
Discover Your Home Decorating Style with These 5 Questions
Be gone, all-white kitchens and greige living rooms. 2025 is the year of deep, saturated paint colors. Homeowners choose these colors to evoke feelings of warmth, coziness, and imitate gatherings. You might also know some of these colors as jewel tones, with rich emerald, sapphire, and ruby shades. Burgundy or maroon also fit the bill.
When painted, these colors require commitment, including floor-to-ceiling prep work, cleaning, and repairs. Invest in the best primer you can afford for the best saturation and final finish. If you’re not ready to commit to a deep color on the walls, you can always choose a piece of furniture with an on-trend hue. Velvet always looks sumptuous in a rich color. Need some color inspiration? Check out the top paint company’s colors of the year for 2025.
What home decorating trend speaks to you? Updating plant pots and their location is a quick and easy update, but adding luxurious paint colors could also be just the upgrade you’ve been craving to warm up your space.