What is the Pantone Color of the Year?

Since 2000, the Pantone Color Institute has named a color it sees reflecting the cultural mood of the year ahead. It influences fashion, product, graphic, and interior design. This page archives every pick with its codes and analyzes the run as a whole.

What is the 2025 Color of the Year?

The 2025 Pantone Color of the Year is Mocha Mousse, a brown tone. Its widely-published on-screen value is #A47864.

Are these the exact official colors?

Pantone defines its colors as physical ink references, not screen values, so the hex codes here are the commonly-published on-screen representations. They are close, but a monitor cannot reproduce a spot color exactly. This archive is independent commentary and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Pantone.

Trends

Pantone Color of the Year, analyzed

Every Pantone Color of the Year since 2000, with its codes and a page for each, plus an original read on the 26-year run: which hues keep coming back, and how the warm-cool balance has shifted. The colors are published selections; the analysis and the numbers below are ours.

2025 Color of the Year

Mocha Mousse

#A47864 · brown

The full archive

Tap any color for its full analysis, palettes, and codes.

Analysis

What 26 years of picks reveal

Read as a set, the choices lean warm: 15 of the 26 picks sit on the warm side of the wheel against 10 cool and 1 neutral. The single most common hue family is red, claiming 8 of the 26 years. The average pick is mid-toned rather than pale or dark, with an OKLCH lightness near 0.64 on a 0 to 1 scale, which fits a color meant to feel current without being a pastel or a near-black.

Picks by hue family

red 8
blue 4
cyan 4
orange 3
pink 3
green 1
purple 1
gray 1
brown 1

Warm vs cool

15 warm 10 cool 1

Method

Method and sourcing

The picks are Pantone's published Colors of the Year. Because Pantone defines its colors as physical ink references, the hex codes here are the widely-published on-screen representations, not exact reproductions; a monitor cannot render a spot color precisely. Every number on this page, the hue-family counts, the warm-cool split, and the average lightness, is computed by our own color engine directly from those hex values, so you can reproduce it. This page is independent commentary and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Pantone.

We do not track what colors visitors look up, so nothing here is derived from usage data. It is a factual archive plus open analysis, in keeping with the site's no-tracking, fully client-side design.

FAQ

Common questions

Why do some years have two colors?: Twice, in 2016 and 2021, Pantone named a pairing rather than a single color. Both are shown, and both are analyzed by their first, headline color.
Can I build a palette around a Color of the Year?: Yes. Open any pick for its full page, then use the palette generator or the harmony tools to build around it. The exact hex is on every card.