The 2025 Renovation Trends Real Estate Experts Say You'll Regret Within a Year

Renovations can be a great way to ensure that your home design doesn’t age poorly or end up frozen in time with a bold, but long-forgotten trend. But when you are deciding on the changes you want to make to the home, you should both the current design trends and their staying power so you’re investing in the right ones.

We spoke to design and real estate experts to find out what 2025 trends you should skip if you want to avoid renovation regrets in the near future.

All-White Kitchens

The idea with an all-white kitchen is to create a modern, sleek, and minimalist feel to the room. But this design has a tendency to show wear, tear, and staining with incredible easy, making it difficult to upkeep over a long period of time.

“It steals all of the warmth from the look and feel of the home and on top of that it timestamps the home to this era of home renovations,” says Michelle Accetta, Interior Designer and Founder of Michelle Accetta Home.

If you have an all-white kitchen or you are in the process of planning a kitchen renovation, consider a shift back to a more classic style in design, including mixed materials and warm colors, such as beige and sepia tones, which lend themselves to a more traditional aesthetic.

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Fluted Details

Similar to the overuse of shiplap not too long ago, fluted details are a current trend that will soon be considered a regret. Fluted details can be seen as shallow grooves on fireplace surrounds, intricate texture fluting on cabinets, or even fluting on furniture.

While it can look good in photos, this design trend quickly starts to feel overdone and it creates a veritable nightmare for homeowners to keep clean, since each of those grooves trap dust.

To make the most of your home, skip fluted details for more standard, time-tested designs.

“Concentrate on energy-saving additions, savvy storage solutions, or universal design ideas,” says Ben Mizes, Real Estate Agent and President of Clever Real Estate. “These enhance daily use and resale while not being susceptible to short-lived styling.”

Floating Vanities Without Storage

Storage is a key component of any home, so it’s rare to find a long-lasting design trend that neglects storage. But if you are installing floating vanities, make sure that they have built-in storage so you aren’t just investing in the aesthetic appearance.

When it comes to floating vanities that lack storage, Mizes is clear on the topic, and says they might be pretty but they’re not functional.

“If you have already invested in this trend, there are work-arounds to mitigate that regret factor, including installing more shelves and adopting savvy storage solutions around the vanities,” Mizes says.

Whole-Home Monochrome Aesthetics

Black and white everywhere can be a bold choice that helps a home stand out, but while this trend sounds sleek on paper, it often leaves the home feeling a little cold.

“One of the biggest misses in the current trends with home renovations is the all black and white look,” Accetta says. “We see people opting into this monochrome existence in their kitchen [or] bath remodels as well as their exterior finishes.”

Designers often work with the rule of three, which essentially means having at least three distinct design elements for any given area. If you have a monochrome space that focuses on white and black, try adding in a pop of color as a third element of the design, like switching out black drawer pulls or opting to replace white curtains with a more colorful choice.

Focus on warmth, light, and natural textures to help improve the space and reduce the risk that you home will fall out of style.

Maximalist Design

Maximalist design has seen some recent popularity in 2025, but this design choice that celebrates abundance, complexity, and unapologetic self-expression is sure to lead to regrets in the future due to endless maintenance, visual fatigue, and the inability to easily renovate the space.

“The wine wall, indoor garden, and ultra specific storage trends impose constraints to flexibility and can in fact turn off potential buyers,” Mizes says.

These themes look great in a photo shoot, but beyond this snapshot they are simply too complex and unmanageable. Stick with more basic trends that allow you to enjoy the home fully, while adopting a less-is-more approach for overly personal customizations.

Color Drenching

Color drenching is the practice of using the same, typically very saturated, color to paint every element of a room, including the trim, walls, and sometimes even the ceiling.

Some people take it a step further by investing in furniture and accents with the same color, which can be a bold, appealing look in rare cases, but is more often a visually overwhelming look that can be hard to reverse, especially if you used a dark or very vivid color.

“I suggest bringing in a third element preferably one of warmth, texture and/or depth,” Accetta says. “This could be swapping out handles in a kitchen, adding some dimension with a stone facade, or even simply painting their door a neutral color.”

When it comes to home design, balance is everything, so before envisioning a room that is drenched in a specific color, consider what elements you could use to balance out this design choice.

All-Stone Open Showers

Another trend that has been appealing throughout 2025 is having an open-concept shower with no doors and an all-stone design.

Mizes notes that all-stone open showers with no doors look “lovely in an Instagram feed, but in practice they mean that you are constantly having to squeegee the glass clean. Your tile takes a beating from water spots and smears, and your bathroom floor needs to be cleaned every day because of all that overspray which could lead to mold issues.”

This ongoing maintenance makes these showers a regret for most homeowners who don’t have the time or the desire to clean the shower after every use. Instead, invest in a more standard and functional shower design. You’ll end up spending less time cleaning the shower and more time simply enjoying the space.