The warmup in home interior hues is making its way outdoors, as homeowners adopt softer…
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Exterior Home Trends to Watch
The warmup in home interior hues is making its way outdoors, as homeowners adopt softer palettes for their homes exteriors and add interest with pops of color and fresh architectural details.
By Julie A. Palm
We’ve seen home interiors warming up in terms of paint hues, wood tones and metal finishes. Trend watchers say there’s a similar climate change happening on home exteriors.
A new report from Houzz says beiges are now the most popular exterior wall colors, doubling in popularity in just two years and outpacing white and gray hues, which are both steadily declining in popularity.
U.S. Brick says the warming trend extends to brick and outdoor accents, where “sunbaked” hues are gaining favor. “Terracotta, muted coral, golden ochre and dusty pink shades are showing up in brick selections, outdoor textiles and decorative details,” the Columbia, South Carolina-based brick producer says in a trends report. “These colors look like they’ve had time to mellow in the sun, which suits the broader move toward homes that feel relaxed, collected and lived-in rather than overly polished.”
Online exterior design firm Brick & Batten sees similar shifts, even in modern homes where black and white palettes have dominated. For instance, Brick & Batten reports homeowners are “more embracing of natural wood tones, warm taupes and mushroom colors, earthy greens (and) soft charcoal accents” on the exteriors of modern constructions.
“The look is still clean, but it’s warmer and even more welcoming than before,” according to a Brick & Batten report published in June. Brick & Batten sees a similar shift toward “warm neutral palettes” in modern cottage and refined traditional home styles, too.
Across home styles, Brick & Batten says homeowners are beginning to shy away from high-contrast color schemes, bright optic whites, cool-toned grays and “stark black window overload.”
“Though that look isn’t totally disappearing, it’s definitely softening,” according to the Brick & Batten report. “… Now, they’re turning to softer contrast like cream with bronze accents or olive paired with natural cedar. The goal now is dimension and warmth, rather than maximum contrast, as it was a few years ago.”
(Here is a good time to acknowledge that exterior home trends vary across the country and even within cities. In my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, there’s a lovely neighborhood of stately, older luxury homes where it seems like every 10th one is getting updated with bright white exterior paint and inky black trim.)
Let’s look at three more design directions in home exteriors that will, ultimately, shape homeowners’ lighting choices, too.
1. Playing with pops of color: Even with softer, warmer paint hues and trims surging in popularity, homeowners still want to add personality to their exteriors. One way to do that is with small dashes of color. “Picture a slate-colored home with a bold front door in mustard yellow or an off-white farmhouse with a navy front porch ceiling,” notes Brick & Batten in its 2026 exterior trends report. (A newly built two-story home in my neighborhood is sporting a warm coral front door that stands out against a soft gray exterior; a brick midcentury modern house across the street from it has a front door freshly painted in cerulean. Both look great.)
2. Black shows staying power: Although the bold black-and-white pairing may be giving way to softer color schemes, black remains the leading trim color (39%), growing 17 points in popularity from 2024 to 2026, according to Houzz. Black has the benefit of “highlighting architectural details and adding visual depth” to home exteriors, the company notes. White trim, by comparison, has fallen in popularity, from 28% to 19% during that same period.
3. Homeowners are adding details and texture: Houzz notes that the use of beams as exterior features has jumped 24 points, to 43%, in the past two years. Columns and pillars, awnings and shutters also are rising in popularity, Houzz says.
And, Brick & Batten adds, homeowners are increasingly prioritizing visual depth.
“Flat exteriors are being replaced with layered combinations, such as stone with wood-look siding, brick with vertical siding, limewash with natural wood, mixed-width siding profiles, and metal accents paired with organic materials,” the company notes.
U.S. Brick charts similar design directions, with homeowners combining brick with “wood or wood-look accents on gables, porches, soffits and entryways; and stone on columns, foundations or feature walls.” Meanwhile, U.S. Brick says, metals are being used “as a clean contrast in roofing, awnings or railings.”
These trends are likely to usher in demand for more softer-looking, natural metal finishes on exterior lighting, as well as more architectural styles, and I like the idea of some of those pops of color coming from well-placed (maybe rechargeable) lamps on porches and patios.
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