For its evocative nature and warmth, Pantone 17-1230 mocha mousse was selected as Pantone’s 2025 color of the year.
Pantone Color Institute Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman artfully describes mocha mousse as a color that reflects the need for harmony. The selection, which marked the 26th anniversary of the Pantone color of the year, comes amid much political turmoil. The Global Peace Index 2024 found that there are currently 56 conflicts worldwide—the highest since World War II. Some 97 countries saw decreases in peacefulness with North America recording the largest regional deterioration in regard to peace, per the Index.
The Pantone Color of the Year program started as a way to engage consumers around how “what’s taking place in the world is expressed into the silent language of color,” Pantone Color Institute Vice President Laurie Pressman told TIME. The color chosen is a reflection of the current needs of the world as opposed to a forecast of what’s on trend.
To select the color, a global team looked at new technologies, social values, art collections, travel destinations, and assessed the overall mood or feelings designers and consumers were feeling throughout the year. “There’s reasons why people gravitate to certain color families when they do. For us, it really is zeroing in on a color family that we see bubbling up across all areas of design, and then from there, drilling it down into the color that we see,” said Pressman. “I always liken this team to almost like color anthropologists.”
Mocha mousse is a progression of last year’s color of the year: peach fuzz, which reflected the need for comfort and coziness.
Aside from the actual hue of the color selected, the name of the shade also plays a significant role in the feeling Pantone is trying to evoke. Mocha mousse—which evokes the image of a light, whipped delicious treat—best describes the “warming, rich brown hue” that people imagine when they dream of comfort.
The color is also an expansion of the neutral shades that are “genderless” and “practical,” said Pressman. “Browns fall into this. And this is a foundational shade, a versatile shade,” she adds. “This is a color that’s honest. It’s authentic. We believe in this. It’s a color we see in nature. We know it’s real.”
