Remember Minimalism? Yeah, It's Dead.

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I got a bit into minimalism in 2016. A few YouTube videos did it. Then came a big wardrobe declutter and, later, a list of all the clothes I own.

I wasn't the only one. Google searches for "minimalism" peaked a few months later, in January 2017. Trends...

Now, almost ten years on, minimalism looks like it's on its way out. Logos get playful again. The iPhone moved to glass UI. Fashion shows color again. And Houzz, the home design platform, wrote in September: "The shift away from minimalism also continues to gain momentum."

So, is minimalism dead? Let's look at data, logos, fashion, interiors, buildings.

Search trends

Google Trends is a nice tool.

It shows how often people search for a word, compared to its own best month. No absolute numbers. But a good sense of direction.

"Minimalism" peaked in January 2017. Since then, the yearly average is down by about 40 percent worldwide. In the US, it's about half.

"Maximalism" grew. It gets about four to five times as many searches as in 2017. But that's still only a fifth of what "minimalism" gets.

So maximalism didn't take over. People just look up minimalism a lot less.

One warning about the numbers. From August 2025 to September 2026, Google Trends went a bit crazy. "Minimalism", "flat design", "quiet luxury", even plain "design" jumped at the same time and fell back later. Unrelated words don't move together like that. A data company called TickerTrends noticed a platform-wide spike in 2025, too.

Logos and design

About ten years ago, many big brands stripped their logos down. What used to be a playful, colorful, rich design scheme turned flat and… yeah minimal.

I liked it back then.

Plain sans-serif letters, flat colors, no details. LogoLounge, which reviews more than 30,000 logos a year, looks back on it as "the fashion world's pivot a decade ago toward soulless minimalism."

Now, it seems like a lot of that gets reversed.

In 2023, Burberry dropped its sans-serif logo from 2018 and brought back its knight from 1901, with a serif wordmark. The same year, Pepsi wanted to "show up bigger and bolder" and went black and electric blue.

In 2025, Google's flat four-color G became a gradient. Google says it "visually reflects our evolution in the AI era." Microsoft redesigned its Office icons and wrote: "We've moved away from bold, static solidity to embrace softer, more fluid forms."

Apple Music did both at once. In September, it got a bold, retro wordmark. Creative Bloq's headline: "The bold new Apple Music logo signals the end of minimalism." A month later, iOS 27.2 turned the red app icon into a black-and-white note.

Both directions at once… kind of.

And going minimal can still backfire. In August 2025, Cracker Barrel swapped its old-timer logo for plain text. In a YouGov poll, 76 percent of Americans preferred the old one. The company lost nearly $100 million in market value and brought the old-timer back within a week.

Yikes...

LogoLounge's 2026 report: "Three-dimensional imagery is everywhere."

Glass design

In 2013, iOS 7 made the iPhone flat. And it was a huge deal. It kickstarted the tech minimalism era.

No more fake leather or felt. Jony Ive said back then: "There is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity, in clarity, in efficiency."

In June 2025, Apple showed Liquid Glass. "This is our broadest software design update ever," Apple's Alan Dye said (so since iOS 7, they mean). The new material "is translucent and behaves like glass in the real world."

Not really minimalist. But also not really colorful. Just… more than before.

Also (for many) harder to read. The Nielsen Norman Group, a big name in usability research, wrote: "Text on top of text creates an illegible mess."

So Apple walked part of it back. iOS 26.1 added a "Tinted" option with more contrast. iOS 27 has a slider "from ultra-clear to fully tinted." And on the Mac, Apple brings back colored sidebar icons.

Fashion too

In 2023, everybody talked about "quiet luxury". Which was a weird problem in and of itself. But that’s another story.

Beige, cashmere, no logos. The show Succession helped a lot. After its last season started, searches for Kendall Roy's Loro Piana cap went up 95 percent on Lyst.

Lyst is a big fashion shopping platform and tracks what people search and buy there. At the end of 2025, it wrote: "Quiet Luxury is retreating." This fall, it sees a shift away from "pared-back labels The Row and Cos" toward "the ornamental: pattern, embellishment and a sense of history."

The Row went from fourth place on Lyst's hottest-brands list a year ago to 14th now.

Vogue says the same about this fall and winter: after seasons "defined by understated dressing," the trends "mark a shift toward a more expressive approach."

But minimalism hasn't left fashion entirely. Pantone's color of the year 2026 is Cloud Dancer. A white. Pantone calls it "a conscious statement of simplification."

Fast Retailing, the company behind Uniqlo and its plain basics, just had another record year. And in early 2026, FX's series Love Story, about Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr., pushed searches for black turtleneck knits up 217 percent on Lyst.

Business of Fashion's headline in March: "Minimalism Was on Its Way Out. Then Came 'Love Story'."

Interiors and design

Interior designers see more color and pattern. Away from the white, gray, and black.

In a 1stDibs survey of 468 designers, maximalism was the most requested style for 2026, at 39 percent. Up from 34 percent in 2023. The top color: chocolate brown.

The paint companies don't go that far.

Not one loud color. Khaki, espresso, jade, eucalyptus, a white. Dulux has a brighter blue in its trio. That's about it.

Buyers seem to agree. In a Zillow survey of more than 4,400 home buyers, people would pay about $2,277 more for a home with a chocolate brown bedroom. Ochre yellow throughout the house would cost a seller about $18,164.

Houzz describes it as a move "away from stark white-and-gray interiors." And: "warmth is now less of a trend and more of a foundation."

And then there's Japandi. That's the mix of Japanese and Scandinavian interior design. Clean lines, wood, linen, calm colors, not much stuff. Minimalism, basically. Just not white.

In the fall of 2023, "Japandi" passed "minimalism" on Google. Today, it gets more than three times the searches.

Other searches on the rise around minimalism this year: "warm minimalism," "soft minimalism," "organic minimalism." Minimalism with an adjective in front.

Architecture

Buildings change slower. Still, there's a debate.

In August 2025, Trump signed an executive order: for federal buildings in Washington, classical architecture is now "the preferred and default architecture." Designs that go another way, "including Brutalist or Deconstructivist," have to be reported to the President.

Of course, he did…

The American Institute of Architects says the order "effectively mandates the use of classical architectural styles."

Many people like columns, too. In polls from the US, the UK, and the Netherlands, 70 to 90 percent prefer traditional buildings over modern ones, according to a review in Works in Progress. Many of those polls came from groups that favor traditional architecture, though.

Architects see it differently. The same review says "nearly all architects and architecture schools practice modernist styles." So most new buildings probably still look modern.

Tidying and the whole minimalism "industry"

Marie Kondo's Netflix show started on January 1, 2019. That month, her name hit its all-time high on Google. Since then, searches for her are down more than 90 percent.

In 2023, with three kids at home, she said about tidying: "I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me." Yeah… I have a handful of these. I get it.

Minimalism also turned into a bit of a shopping trip for many. Out with the old plates, in with new beige ones. I made fun of that last year.

Minimalism was basically becoming a marketing trend to shop more. Which is the opposite of what it should have been.

Decluttering didn't stop, either. Searches for "decluttering" have tripled since 2017. This fall, they passed "minimalism."

So people still clear out their homes. They just don't call it minimalism anymore. They buy more. And call it a day.

The Minimalists are still on tour, by the way. Some shows this fall are sold out. So... they're not dead.

There is always a catch

Google Trends only shows relative interest. No absolute search numbers. And "minimalism" is also an art movement and a music genre, so not every search is about white walls. Many people also live minimal without ever googling the word.

Trend reports want to sell something. Pantone sells color guides. Pinterest sells ads and says 88 percent of its predictions from the last six years came true.

And the logos above... For every Burberry, there's probably a startup that just launched with a plain sans-serif logo. I bet. With AI. I bet.

The Bottom Line

So, is minimalism dead?

The word, sort of. Fewer people search for it. Logos and runways got more playful and colorful… again, and maximalism keeps growing. Whatever that means...

The look is still around. A bit warmer and softer, maybe. And it goes by Japandi now.

Cold, white-and-gray minimalism is on its way out, according to the numbers. The warm kind is doing pretty well.

How about you? Still white walls? Or Japandi already?

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