A Look at Pantone’s 2025 Color of the Year

Before Pantone became a color institution with more than 10,000 different colors in its library, it was a commercial printing company founded in the 1950s. Customers were having a hard time finding the right colors for their printing needs, and often resorted to sending physical pieces of fabric through the mail and hoping for a perfect match. 

Then in 1963, one of their print technicians developed a solution to standardize color reproduction—the Pantone Matching System—and they eventually moved into custom color development, creating iconic trademarked colors like the bold red of retail giant Target and the robin egg blue that’s synonymous with Tiffany & Co.

In 1999, the Pantone Color Institute started their Color of the Year program as a way to spark a global conversation about culture and color. To arrive at the yearly selection, a diverse team of color experts scour the globe in search of color influences from everyday sights and sounds—the entertainment industry, art, fashion, design, travel destinations, lifestyle trends, and even new technologies and textures. 

Many of the Pantone Color Institute team members are designers or teachers themselves, living and breathing color and designs, so the decision to name the next “it” color isn’t a one-time meeting and selection. It’s more of a continuous, year-long gathering of insight and analysis from people continuously in tune with color

So what color earned the title for 2025? If you like chocolate, you’re in luck, as Mocha Mousse took center stage, described as “a warming, brown hue imbued with richness.”

"It's emblematic of a snapshot in time and it's giving people what they feel they need—that that color can hope to answer," said Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute. "It's us taking the temperature: What's taking place in the world around us and how does that get expressed into the language of color?”

They add that Mocha Mousse evokes feelings of thoughtful indulgence, harmonious comfort, and contentment that “can stand alone or serve as a versatile foundation, enhancing a wide range of palettes and applications—from minimalist to richly detailed designs—across all color-focused industries.”

With those “delectable” undertones of chocolate, cocoa, and coffee, Mocha Mousse can help tap into the senses and inspire consumers to reach out and engage in hopes of capturing the sense of warmth, luxury, and indulgence that it presents in everything from clothing to card stock. 

But more than just Mocha Mousse, the Color of the Year is a reminder about the power color can have, and how it can be used to influence perception about a brand or a product. It plays a critical role in the impression you make and whether or not consumers will be motivated to make a purchase and a connection. It actually becomes one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal, as it spans industries, generations, and cultures with a universally recognizable visual language. 

Color means communication—visually and emotionally—and using Mocha Mousse to your advantage in 2025 could help turn the Color of the Year into a “delectable” year for your brand.