Partly Cloudy: The business and belief behind the colour of the year

Colour Story:

How is the colour of the year decided?

The year-round process is a culmination of the macro-level colour trend forecasting and research that the global team involved with the Pantone Color Institute conducts. According to its website, to arrive at the selection each year, a global team of colour experts comb the world looking for new colour influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, travelling art collections and new artists, fashion, all areas of design, aspirational travel destinations, new lifestyles, playstyles or enjoyable escapes, as well as socio-economic conditions.

Who decides?
Members of the Pantone Color Institute run independent design studios, contribute to influential global trend forecasts, advise clients on colour choices for products and brand identities, or teach colour theory. The company claims the team is geographically and culturally diverse.

Where does the name of the shade come from?
The colour’s name is also chosen carefully to help communicate the intended story and emotional resonance.


What makes it influential?
Marketing and PR: This is where COTY travels fastest. Branding and digital campaigns, operating on shorter timelines, adopt the colour as a mood or tonal cue.

Fashion and lifestyle: Collections are planned 18-24 months ahead, so COTY rarely alters garments already in development. Its influence is seen instead in styling choices, visual merchandising and communication, with brands launching small, trend-led capsules rather than reworking entire ranges.

Home and interiors: Structural decisions remain unchanged, but trend colours surface in soft furnishings, feature walls, furniture accents and décor styling, especially once amplified by celebrity homes and design media.

The Business of Colour

Originally started in 1963 as a colour communication system, Pantone announced its first-ever Colour of the Year (COTY) in 1999.

Its consulting arm, the Pantone Color Institute, has since forecasted global colour trends, and advises companies on colour in brand identity and product development. The stated intent is for the colour to represent global culture in a hue that captures the moment, and “to engage the design community and colour enthusiasts around the world in a conversation around colour”.

In practice, however, the exercise is also deeply commercial. As Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly memorably explains in The Devil Wears Prada, the seemingly incidental choice of a shade like ‘cerulean’ Pantone’s first colour of the year announced for 2000 to show up on Anne Hathway’s sweater is anything but accidental: It represents vast economic value, labour and an industry-wide chain of influence. “That blue represents millions of dollars, countless jobs…”

Pantone is not just a neutral cultural authority on colour; it is a company that sells colour systems, standards and licensing. By constantly promoting new shades and framing them as part of broader aesthetic or cultural trends, Pantone creates demand for those colours across industries.

For its much-debated Colour of the Year for 2026 Cloud Dancer the institute has already announced a slate of brand partnerships: With Mandarin Oriental, spanning curated Cloud Dancer afternoon-tea sets, oxygenating spa treatments, luxury stays “high up in the clouds” and even Cloud Dancer postboxes for letters to Santa; a special 70-year Play-Doh edition in the 2026 Colour of the Year; and collaborations with consumer brands such as Motorola. On their part, it says that the people who decide COTY have no commercial agenda or insert “their personal preferences”.

That makes this a big business

While Pantone has captured the mindspace for most, there are others that do similar exercises, including global paint brands such as Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams as also industry bodies Color Marketing Group (CMG), International Colour Authority (ICA). Color Association of the United States (CAUS).

Colours That Stood Out

2016 Rose Quartz & Serenity (dual colours): The rose gold iPhone launched in 2015 caused the colour to “hit critical mass”, and because of this, in 2016, the colour was named Pantone Colour of the Year, according to a BBC article.

2017 Greenery: This led to the boom of bringing nature indoors in interior and décor. In fashion, Greenery showed up across the Spring 2017 catwalks, including in collections from Gucci, Prada, Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton, Etro and Lacoste.

2022 Very Peri (custom created shade): For the first time in the history of the program, a new colour was custom-created. Very Peri’s biggest cultural footprint was online. As Pantone’s first ‘invented’ colour, it became a visual shorthand for digital creativity, Web3 and hybrid realities, appearing far more in screens than wardrobes.

2026 Cloud Dancer: This has become one of Pantone’s most controversial picks as the first shade of white ever chosen. Critics have called it uninspired and culturally tone-deaf, with some reading political and racial symbolism into the choice. Social media backlash and satire followed.

The India Experience

“Cocoa Mousse for 2025 was a raving success across fashion, lifestyle, home interiors and electronics. But not all colours are as commercially viable. Peach Fuzz didn’t travel the same way," Prithvi Rao, head of trend forecast and design at Flipkart Fashion

How India Reacts to COTY
In India, COTY acts more as a cultural catalyst than a directive, shaping conversations, campaigns and consumer expectations, while real business decisions continue to be anchored in context, timing and long-term strategy.

Indian consumers respond to global trend colours at multiple speeds and this layered response is central to understanding the market.

At one end, there is a digitally fluent, urban consumer who encounters global trends almost instantly. This segment is often quick to experiment and can be considered early adopters. However, even here, adoption is rarely literal. Colours are adapted, mixed, and contextualised rather than followed unquestioningly.

The mass market, on the other hand, moves more gradually. For a colour to translate meaningfully, it needs repeated exposure across familiar touchpoints, retail, festivals, cinema and celebrity endorsements. The reality of Indian adoption is gradual and contextual.

Sabyasachi's ethereal ivory creations at the Met Gala, Diljit Dosanjh in that stunning all-white ensemble and Alia Bhatt in pristine, luminous tones have, in fact, been precursors to Cloud Dancer on global stages for the past two years. We were already speaking this language of soft, considered elegance before Pantone made it official.

(Based on conversations with Prof. Usha Nehru Patel, Director Academics, IIAD)

The Corporate POV
Conversations with Asian Paints suggest that their colour forecasting is led through large algorithmic models based on retailing and consumption trends.

They say that global shade announcements like Pantone’s does not influence Asian Paint’s own trend program called ColourNext.

“ColourNext is an independent research programme started in 2003… wholly relevant to design and designers in India,” the company says, adding that global forecasts often generalise trends across geographies. That said, correlations do emerge. As the world becomes more visually connected, “we see correlations… in sentiment and underlying visual cues”, even if the starting points differ, the company added.

For Asian Paints, forecasting is less about chasing a colour and more about reading behaviour. “The best forecasts signal behaviours and patterns that are changing, more than direct consumption,” the company notes, pointing to the rise of “safe choices” with neutral shades now visible across homes, fashion, automobiles and even children’s clothing.

(Based on conversations with Asian Paints’s spokesperson)

India’s Colours
India’s relationship with colour predates global trend forecasts. It has long been a pioneer in colour, contributing iconic hues such as Indian Red, Indian Yellow and Indigo. Here, colour is shaped by craft traditions, ritual, philosophy, climate and emotion, making it deeply contextual rather than trend-led.

This cultural depth explains why global colour diktats struggle to land uniformly in India. While shade cards and colour standards matter for consistency, a single global shade cannot act as a universal truth. Every nation carries its own emotional and historical vocabulary of colour the world cannot be reduced to a single, universal choice.

The very premise of a single, global colour driving meaningful change across diverse markets like India is questionable. Pantone’s COTY is less an organic cultural signal and more a top-down construct.

At the heart of this critique is the idea that colour never works in isolation. It works through relationships, as a colourway that lives beside other colours, or as a colour story that carries context, mood and socio cultural meaning.

It does not meaningfully influence Indian production, sourcing, or retail decisions. Indian colour choices are shaped by far more grounded forces.

India’s relationship with colour is far more regional, shaped by climate, craft traditions, local materials, festivals, and lived culture, so a single global pick can’t capture the way colour actually works here.

This is why, Indian brands often appear to align with Pantone shades without actually being influenced by them. What looks like trend adoption is frequently cultural continuity.

From a business standpoint, this limits Pantone’s colour forecast’s ability to drive core decisions like fabric orders, material sourcing or long-term inventory bets. Its role is more symbolic than structural.

(Based on conversations with Kaustav Sengupta, professor, colour and trend forecaster and head at NIFT VisionNxt)