The future of design: What’s new & what’s next for apartment marketing

Dec 14, 2022

Image of a bright living room with pink walls and a yellow couch with text overlay that says "2023 design trends"

The future is now. At least in terms of apartment design trends. Are you ready? With this infographic about the future of design for apartment marketing, you will be.

Our friends at RentCafe.com recently pulled data to examine trending apartment design styles. They found that interest in certain styles is skyrocketing, while other trends are becoming less popular.

Apply this information to your apartment marketing materials to catch the attention of more renters. You can use trending styles and colors to freshen up your website, social media profiles and even onsite printed items.

Infographic showing top three design trends and two colors of the year for 2023

Download and share this infographic here.

The team at RentCafe.com examined 8 months of Google search data (Jan.-Aug. 2022) for 35 of the most popular design styles. Then they compared that data year over year to see which styles were getting more popular over time (and which weren’t).

The styles with the biggest search increases are:

Japandi: Search volume is up 125%

This style is characterized by a blend of Japanese and Scandinavian styles. It combines minimalism with natural touches to create spaces that are tranquil, zen and harmonic.

Dark Academia: Search volume is up 72%

This style comprises dark wood furniture, low lighting and rich fabrics. With a tendency toward coziness, it’s used to create spaces that are mysterious, dramatic and a little gloomy.

Maximalism: Search volume is up 60%

This style combines colors, shapes and patterns in artful abundance. This joyful exuberance creates spaces that are loud, eclectic and lively.

A handful of other popular styles also saw increases in search volume too. Some of these include modern farmhouse, midcentury modern, modern Victorian and Scandinavian. These have been top-searched styles for a long time, so they still get a lot of volume, even though they’re not experiencing as much growth as the others.

Styles that have dropped in search popularity include baroque, biophilic and rustic.

When it comes to color, multiple agencies and design houses like to forecast what’s new and what’s next. Here are three official colors of 2023, as declared by some of the biggest names in the business.

Raspberry Blush: Benjamin Moore Color Of The Year

This warm blush shade exudes confidence and charisma. Because it’s vivacious, upbeat and bold, it’s a good color to use when you want to grab attention and add a celebratory vibe. We suggest using it for headlines, backgrounds and logos.

Digital Lavender: Coloro Color Of The Year

A refreshing and somehow neutral shade of purple, digital lavender bridges the natural and digital world. It’s optimistic, uplifting and youthful, making it great for social media graphics, merch accents and website banners and pop-ups.

“Looking to refresh your website? Digital lavender is calm, uplifting and optimistic,” said Neha Marathe, creative manager at REACH. “It’s associated with serenity and considered gender inclusive by trend forecasters.”

Viva Magenta: Pantone Color Of The Year

The color experts at Pantone say that Viva Magenta “vibrates with vim and vigor.” (And yes, we looked up “vim,” and it means energetic and enthusiastic.) Balancing warm and cool, Viva Magenta is joyous and fun. It’s a big more intense than Raspberry Blush, so we recommend using it for small accents or to create an Instagrammable moment.

Apartment marketing design applications

Now that you know which designs and colors are trending, what are you going to do with that information?

We suggest you pair trending colors and styles in your marketing to stand out from the competition. A lot of property websites, flyers and signs look the same, but they don’t have to! Stand out in a sea of same by getting ahead of design trends.

Even if you don’t plan on launching or rebranding a property in 2023, there are many small ways you can freshen up your existing marketing with small tweaks.

Here’s a list of apartment marketing design updates to get you started:

Contract a designer (or agency) to update your logo
Add one of the colors of the year as your contrast color or link color on your website
Use a trending color for your nudge marketing pop-ups
Cycle through design trends in your social media posts, then survey your audience to find their fave
Create a photo wall in your leasing office using a trending style or color

If you’re a REACH by RentCafe client, you can work with our creative team to reach your style goals for 2023.

Learn more about apartment design trends

See what else is trending for renters and keep up with market news on the RentCafe blog.

Geneva Ives

Geneva Ives is the senior manager of marketing content at Yardi. She leads content initiatives for REACH by RentCafe. Writing may be her first love, but data is a close second. Geneva is based in Santa Barbara, California.