What is the most popular color for bathrooms right now?

Warm whites and soft greens are the most popular bathroom colours right now, with sage and eucalyptus the two shades clients name most often. Cold grey, which dominated the 2010s, is the colour we now get asked to paint over. The wider shift is towards earthy tones: clay, taupe, warm beige, with terracotta showing up in accessories rather than on walls.

Colour choice matters more in a small room than a big one, and most of the bathrooms we fit are small. A typical Victorian terrace bathroom in Dulwich or Sydenham is around two metres square with one modest window, often north-facing. In that light, cold greys and stark whites go flat and slightly blue. Warm whites bounce what daylight there is and read as clean rather than clinical. Sage green works because it holds its colour under both daylight and artificial light instead of shifting muddy.

Two practical rules from our jobs. Keep the tiles neutral and put the colour on painted walls or the vanity, because paint is cheap to change and tiles are not. And match your bulbs to your palette: warm-toned colours under a cold-white downlight look wrong, so fit warmer lamps or a dimmable fitting. Darker colours, deep green or navy, can work, but only in rooms with decent natural light or as a single wall behind the basin.