Everyone wants a warmer kitchen: what homeowners tried this fall

Something shifted when September hit. Through late August, the rooms people redesigned on Roomvana spread across the whole house — living rooms, exteriors, bedrooms, nothing dominating. Then, in one week, kitchens jumped from 12% of all design sessions to 38%. Exteriors dropped from 23% to 5%. Bedrooms edged from 16% to 22%. If you've been staring at your cabinets lately, you're not the only one.

The numbers below cover three and a half weeks of real design choices, mid-August through early September 2026. The short version: homeowners are going warmer, working smaller, and getting more deliberate about style. If you're about to redo a room, here's what other homeowners tried first.

Warm colors did the work

Among people who requested a specific paint color, 67% chose warm neutrals and the rest went with greens. Cool tones — navy, charcoal, cool blue — drew zero picks in three and a half weeks.

Greige was the single most popular choice, accounting for a third of all color requests. Forest green and warm white followed, each at 22%. No one asked for navy, terracotta, pink, or mustard. When people swapped a material instead of painting, every choice was walnut — no light oak, no gray flooring.

Before

After

Kitchens also accounted for 58% of one-change projects. When you're testing just one thing in a room, the cabinets are where it makes the biggest difference.

If you're narrowing down a paint direction right now, the pattern is pretty clear. Warm neutrals and muted greens are where people land when they commit — not just what looks good on a mood board. Greige walls next to walnut cabinets feel less like a trend and more like the direction people kept coming back to.

One surface, not a full gut job

Most projects were still full-room redesigns — everything changed at once. But among indoor rooms — kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms — nearly a quarter were partial changes: one wall, one set of cabinets, one floor, everything else untouched.

Twenty-one percent of people came back to adjust a previous design instead of starting over. Among those second tries, 57% changed just one area — a different cabinet color, a new shade on one wall, a flooring swap — while everything else stayed put.

That's not someone dreaming up a whole new kitchen. That's someone who knows what's bugging them about the real one and wants to see the fix before picking up a brush. The cracked backsplash stays in the photo. The dated countertop stays. You change one thing and see if the room feels different.

More people chose a style on purpose

Modern is the starting style on Roomvana, and it still accounted for 44% of all style picks. But 63% of people switched to something else — and what they switched to changed fast.

In late August, minimalist sat at 6% of all style picks. By the first week of September it hit 16%. Scandinavian made the same jump, 5% to 16%. Modern dropped 15 points. Mid-century modern more than doubled. Meanwhile, tropical and japandi both faded — japandi went from 6% to zero by early September.

Living rooms leaned minimalist at 22%, with mid-century and Scandinavian tied at 15%. Kitchens — the breakout room in this window — tilted Scandinavian. Exterior facades favored modern farmhouse at 24%, the one style that held its ground instead of growing.

If you've been sticking with "modern" because it felt safe, take a look at minimalist or Scandinavian. They're cleaner, they run warm, and they're what people pick when they choose a style on purpose.

If you're getting ready to start

You don't need to follow what everyone else picked. But when you're stuck between three paint chips or two completely different kitchen moods, knowing where other homeowners landed can break the tie.

• If the kitchen is already on your mind, start there. That's where most one-change projects happened, and one change there — just the cabinets, just one wall — is one of the most visible fixes in the house.
• Go warm. Cool tones didn't just trail; they got zero picks across three and a half weeks. Greige, warm white, cream, forest green — any of them can feel current without boxing you in later.
• Change one thing and live with it. A fifth of people came back to refine one thing rather than redo everything. One change, a day to sit with it, then decide what's next. That beats redesigning a whole room in your head and hoping it lands.

The Houzz fall preview points in the same direction — warmth as the baseline, with character and personality valued over polish. Three and a half weeks of actual design choices line up with it, and the kitchen is where it all started.