Pantone’s 2025 Color of the Year is all about “comfort”

“Mocha Mousse” was announced as the Pantone Color of the Year for 2025, and experts told Newsweek that the hue’s familiarity encompasses the current global attitude.

Newsweek has reached out to the Pantone for comment via its online media form.

Why It Matters

Color theory allows for people to understand how colors interact with the visuals of different hues and shades. Colors often impact how someone feels, with the values having a psychological impact that’s often used in art, design and marketing, with 90 percent of initial product assessments based solely on color, Atefeh Yazdanparast, an associate professor of marketing at Clark University, told Newsweek.

The idea of familiarity and comfort with a natural brown within 2025 has already proven a necessity after the world has faced multiple attacks within just the first few days of the new year. Shamsud-Din Jabbar was named the suspect in the New Year’s truck attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, that killed at 14 people and injured 30 others. Meanwhile, a Cybertruck exploded in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday, killing the driver and injuring seven others. In addition, a gunman in Montenegro fatally shot at least 12 people, including two children, before taking his own life as police closed in, officials said Thursday.

What To Know

Pantone chooses a color each year that “captures the global zeitgeist,” according to its website. The 2025 color, Mocha Mousse, is a “warming, brown hue imbued with richness.”

“It nurtures us with its suggestion of the delectable qualities of chocolate and coffee, answering our desire for comfort,” Pantone wrote.

Yazdanparast told Newsweek that Mocha Mousse’s brown color is a “grounding, neutral color associated with comfort, resilience and safety and security.” The warm hue typically represents happiness, while the lower saturation is considered calming. This represents a need for 2025 to bring harmony, she said.

“I think Mocha Mousse is a very good choice but if I had to choose a different color, given the tensions in the world (e.g. Russia-Ukraine war, Israeli-Hamas war), I would have chosen a color that better symbolizes yearning for peace,” Yazdanparast said. “My choice would have been from the blue family, maybe baby blue or sky blue.”

Laura Guido-Clark, the founder of love good color, told Newsweek, that there’s a need for familiarity going into 2025.

“I do feel like there’s part of it that they talk about with human need and this need for connection which is correct. I think we are seeking true stability,” she said. “I think familiarity is very important right now.”

For this, Guido-Clark said she would have chosen a muted color or something that represents calm and soothing feelings. A warmer, neutral pallet “works in harmony with so many natural things,” returning to the ideas of nature in an age of technology and political polarization, Guido-Clark said. She added that a natural color would have been her choice, but she also would have chosen a pallet rather than one pick.

Yazdanparast said the reliance and importance of digital technology could have been encompassed with an “electric blue,” which “could be associated with innovation and digital advancements.”

“I think it’s coming from this idea of technology, while it has promised to connect us it has isolated us and I think there’s this fear of what AI [artificial intelligence] might bring,” Guido-Clark told Newsweek. “There’s an innate understanding that there’s a polarization in our politics and that there’s a need to meet more in the middle.”

What People Are Saying

Laurie Pressman, the vice president of the Pantone Color Institute, in a press release: “For Pantone Color of the Year 2025, we look to a mellow brown hue whose inherent richness and sensorial and comforting warmth extends further into our desire for comfort, and the indulgence of simple pleasures that we can gift and share with others.”

Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of Pantone Color Institute, in a press release: “Underpinned by our desire for every day pleasures, PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse expresses a level of thoughtful indulgence. Sophisticated and lush, yet at the same time an unpretentious classic, PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse extends our perceptions of the browns from being humble and grounded to embrace aspirational and luxe.”