• Business Insider asked color experts which hues are on their way out in 2025.
• Black may seem sophisticated, but it's not a great choice for long-term livability.
• More people will phase out colors like olive green and mustard yellow in favor of softer hues.

As the end of the year approaches, many designers and color experts are reflecting on the hues people added to their homes throughout 2024. However, some of these colors will likely be phased out in the new year.

Business Insider asked three color experts which hues they predict people will use less in 2025. Here's what they said.

In 2024, people got carried away with gray.

According to Vanessa Helmick, owner and interior designer at Fiore Home, more people will start replacing gray tones in 2025.

The designer said the color will likely be phased out because it was being used for elements — like flooring — that aren't naturally gray.

Additionally, since marble became trendy in kitchens and bathrooms in recent years, homeowners and builders felt they had to use gray everywhere.

However, these color choices often appear inorganic and cold, so Helmick predicts more people will avoid gray in 2025.

Cool colors, like slate blue and taupe, aren't as popular as they once were.

According to Paula Kennedy, a certified architectural color consultant and the CEO of Timeless Kitchen Design LLC, colors with gray in them, like taupe, slate, and cool blues, are fading away as well.

She said the move toward warmer colors is becoming stronger, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where the weather turns gray.

"Right now, there's just an overall theme of warming up," Kennedy told BI.

Sage green is falling out of favor.

Shades of green have long been in vogue, but Kennedy predicts sage will fall out of favor as people shift toward richer, deeper hues.

She also believes watery turquoise shades will replace basic blues and greens, as these hues have greater design flexibility and harmonize well with other colors.

Stark white can look too harsh or worn.

Color expert Amy Wax told BI that many people love white for its purity and cleanliness, but the hue can quickly look worn or tired when used on furniture — especially next to other white elements.

"If everything is as stark as the white, it's fine," said Wax. "Otherwise, fabrics become faded-looking."

Stark white can also be too harsh on the eyes, so more people are opting for hues that feel softer.

Black-and-white designs don't feel cozy.

Though black appears sexy and elegant at first glance, Kennedy believes people will move away from it because it isn't sustainable as a long-term color choice.

She also said combining black and white in a design is becoming passé."Black and white has a clarity," said Kennedy. "It's simple and matter-of-fact, but we're not in that place psychologically anymore."

The designer believes uncertainty in the world is causing more people to opt for cozy home designs — and black and white shades don't fit the bill anymore. 

Fewer people are opting for nautical blue.

Nautical blue has long been a staple in Helmick's New England community, but the designer believes the color will start to become less popular in 2025.

According to Helmick, nautical blue-and-white themes can feel limiting, as updating or changing such a distinctive color scheme can be difficult. "People are moving less, the real-estate market isn't moving as fast, and they want to freshen up their homes," she told BI.

She predicts more people will bring in warm tones and pair them with colors that freshen things up and add a sense of coziness.

Mustard and olive hues are dated.

Though quirky colors like mustard yellow and olive green had a moment, 2025 may be a good time to rid your home of them.

"Mustard gold and olive green were attractive because they were unique," said Wax. "But people want something more easygoing."

She believes 2025 will see more people gravitating toward calmer hues.

Yellows and teals are on their way out.

Yellow and teal were popular in 2024, but Wax feels their time has passed.

"Intensely playful colors like bright yellows and teals have a harshness that has been overplayed," the expert told BI. "People want easier colors that you can decorate around."

• Ulku Dogan had surgery to make her eyes blue after wearing colored contact lenses for years.
• Keratopigmentation involves making a channel in the cornea and placing colored dye inside.
• The procedure has gained traction online but isn't FDA-approved.

For 20 years, Ulku Dogan, a wealth advisor in San Francisco, wore colored contact lenses because she longed to have blue eyes.

Seven weeks ago, her dream came true when she flew to New York and paid $12,000 for surgery to permanently change her eye color from brown to blue.

"I feel confident, very happy. It is the best investment I've ever done for myself," Dogan, 49, told Business Insider. "I wish I had done this 10 years ago."

To change her eye color, Dr. Kevin Niksarli, one of a handful of ophthalmic surgeons in the US to offer cosmetic keratopigmentation, used a laser to poke two holes in her corneas, the clear, outermost part of the eye. This creates a channel that sits atop the colored part of the eye, which is then filled with dye.

Niksarli has been performing corneal laser eye surgeries for 30 years and started offering the procedure to patients in 2023. At his clinic, Manhattan LASIK Center, patients can choose from 11 shades, including emerald green, lagoon, and honey.

First, he colored Dogan's left eye. He let her assess it and asked if she wanted to make any changes to the shade before moving on to the right eye.

"I'm like, 'Doctor, can you go a little brighter?' And then he went a little brighter, and I loved it," Dogan said.

Though keratopigmentation is not FDA-approved, interest in the procedure is growing. In a medical context, it's used to treat patients with iris loss, damage, or trauma. But TikTok videos showing before-and-after images of patients who've undergone the procedure for aesthetic reasons have racked up millions of views.

Dr. Alexander Movshovich, who in 2019 became the first doctor to offer the procedure cosmetically in the US, saw 15 patients in his first year, he told The Wall Street Journal. He's now performed the procedure over 750 times, he told Ophthalmology Times.

"This procedure is safe and that was proven in the peer review literature," Movshovich told BI in an email, noting that people with chronic eye diseases would need to have an individual consultation to assess whether they would be a good candidate.

The American Academy of Opthalmology warns against cosmetic eye treatments

The permanent procedure is painless and fast, said Dogan, who experienced no side effects other than discomfort on the first night and some light sensitivity for a few days.

Some doctors, however, argue that there isn't enough evidence that the benefits of cosmetic eye surgery outweigh the known and potential long-term risks.

In January, the American Academy of Ophthalmology warned that keratopigmentation could cause infections, light sensitivity, and damage to the cornea that could lead to cloudiness, warpage, fluid leakage, or vision loss.

"Patients contemplating these procedures for cosmetic reasons alone must weigh these serious risks against the potential gain," the AAO said.

In a 2021 study published in the Journal of Cornea and External Disease, 12 out of 40 keratopigmentation patients experienced light sensitivity in the first month. Five said the pigment faded or changed in color after 29 months, and one who had previously had Lasik, a type of vision-correction surgery, developed corneal ectasia, a condition that causes the cornea to thin and bulge outward. All of the participants said they were satisfied with the cosmetic results.

"Personally, if it were me, I would rather use colored contacts for a cosmetic benefit instead of putting myself at risk of long-term side effects that we don't even know because research hasn't even been able to go that far," Dr. Julian Prosia, a board-certified optometrist in Canada, said in a TikTok video.

In a letter sent to the AAO in July, Movshovich and three other ophthalmologists who provide or research the procedure said that many of the possible risks listed on the AAO warning "have never occurred with keratopigmentation" and are "not founded on fact."

The AAO told BI that it stands behind the evidence provided. "Everything in life has some degree of risk, including getting out of bed in the morning. The question is how common, severe or reversible are the adverse outcomes compared to potential benefits or alternatives. The calculus for medical/therapeutic applications is completely different from that for cosmetic procedures," Stephen D. McLeod, CEO of the AAO, told BI in an email.

Dogan was willing to take the risk

Dogan had looked into iris implant surgery, in which an artificial iris made of silicone is inserted into a slit cut into the cornea and adjusted to cover the natural iris. But the procedure wasn't offered in the US at the time, and she deemed it too risky. In January, the AAO warned against iris implant surgery, which it said could cause permanent damage, vision loss, and glaucoma.

She hadn't heard about keratopigmentation until a trusted friend who's a plastic surgeon had the procedure.

"He got his eye colored, and I'm like, 'What else do I need?'" Dogan said. "It's confirmed results." She quickly booked an appointment with his surgeon.

Although Dogan was aware of the potential risks of the surgery, she chose to go ahead and is pleased with her results.

"When people ask me now, 'Do you have contact lenses?' I can say, 'No, these are my eyes,'" she said.