Why This Controversial Color Is Actually the Perfect Neutral for a Relaxing, Cozy Room

Few colors are as divisive as the color pink. It’s long been associated with femininity, and thanks to recent gender reveal trends, it’s the color shooting out of confetti canons or exploding from paint-filled balloons to denote “It’s a girl!” Because of these longstanding societal ties to girlhood, pink is often considered less universal than other colors and often gets passed up for more “gender-neutral” alternatives. However, pink is just a color, one that can be found every evening in sunset skies—something that we can all universally appreciate. So, we’re here to say that pink absolutely can be a neutral, and it’s worth keeping in the running when choosing neutral paint colors for your home.

Mallory Fletchall, a Brooklyn-based content creator and owner of the decor blog Reserve Home, helped us prove this point by using a neutral pink shade for the office she designed in the 2025 REAL SIMPLE Home. Check out her room below to see how the color works in the space—and why you should consider this hue for your own home.

Fletchall designed a warm and charming office in this year’s REAL SIMPLE Home, and one of her main goals was to bring more character to the space. “I was excited to experiment with adding charm to an NYC modern high-rise, so my starting point was installing crown molding and a chair rail to give the room a canvas with some architectural interest,” she says.

She also brought in timeless furniture pieces that ooze vintage appeal, like this secretary desk from Ballard Designs and this Lulu and Georgia daybed in deep mahogany velvet. “I wanted the room to feel calming, with a relaxed elegance that also highlights my love for mixing vintage and modern in a way that feels very European-inspired,” Fletchall says.

In this context, it’s clear to see how the all-over pink room color, Farm-Fresh Eggs by Valspar, fits perfectly into the theme. The soft pink shade has a vintage charm to it that pairs perfectly with the more traditional accents around the room. The color is subtle enough that you hardly notice it’s pink, yet it contributes to the overall design story the space is telling in a way that a classic off-white paint simply couldn’t.

Another innovative way Fletchall used the pink color in the room? She painted a set of IKEA cabinets to match the walls. “I used an IKEA hack to build a cabinet along the back wall that I feel really grounds the space and creates a fun workspace for styling,” she says. “By adding moldings, a custom stone top, and painting it to match the walls, it feels elevated and injects more of that character I always crave into the room.”