Why do certain colors become big? Demystifying seasonal color trends

It’s happened to us all—you walk through a city, and the same color palette pops up in every shop window, from clothing to kitchenware to sneakers. Unconnected brands all seem to have had the same idea simultaneously. How do they do it?

I sit on Pantone’s color committee, which predicts many seasonal color trends designers will follow. If you want to get ahead of next season’s color trends, here’s some insight into how we choose the colors you’ll soon see everywhere.

I was invited to join Pantone’s color committee in the early noughties. I’d been working as a color and trend forecaster in the sportswear industry for years, and it was because of this niche interest that I was invited, one morning, to a studio in east London and found myself in a room with the most influential people, colorwise, on the planet. 

Since then, I’ve been meeting with them every six months to discuss color, and over the course of several weeks, we produce the View Pantone Colour Planner. This is the most successful and longest-running color prediction book. Car companies, department stores, and fashion design departments all over the planet buy it. Working in partnership with Pantone, the global authority on color, we present a curated set of seasonal color palettes for companies to apply to their products. 

The book comes out twice a year, for the Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter seasons. Because most of the industries that buy our book have a long timeline from initial design ideas to finished products, we devise these palettes up to two years before they hit the market. As I write this, we’re considering Spring/Summer 2027. 

Color forecasting is often portrayed as something mysterious and ‘woo’, but over the years I have found the following five things to be the most influential in our decision-making. Spoiler alert: all of them are the opposite of woo—until you read number five. 

Color forecasters must be well-read, well-traveled people plugged into global events. Any forecaster worth their salt looks to see what major events will occur when the season they’re working on comes to fruition. For example, if you’re working on a palette to hit the stores during an Olympic season, you can bet there will be some eye-catching primaries. Forecasters look at films, current affairs, politics—anything that might influence the mood of the global community and, in turn, affect what people want to buy as these events unfold. 

The economy has a massive influence over which colors we buy.  In times of economic recession, customers buy expensive items in more classic, long-lasting colors but are also drawn to smaller, cheaper items in bright, cheery shades. It’s called the lipstick effect, and I went into more detail in last month’s post on brand color palettes.

How colors are produced can also influence seasonal color trends. For example, dyestuffs were never used to be regulated in the way they are today, and some shades were very poisonous to produce. I remember many years ago when certain neon shades were temporarily withdrawn from circulation until a cleaner way of making the colors could be developed. When this was achieved, the shades were rereleased several years later, and everyone fell upon them like old friends. That particular season, neons were everywhere.

Similarly, Pantone sometimes releases new shades into its color library, and this draw of the new affects all of us.

Currently, eco-friendly/vegetable dyes are dictating specific industry segments, which means a nature-inspired color character is more prevalent.

Color forecasting is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We forecasters have other jobs working for different industries, and we like to talk to one another—partly because we’re a friendly bunch and also because our clients want us to speak to one another.

When I start working with a new client, one of my first questions is: “What are the on-trend colors for this season, and can we have them too, please?” There would be no color trends if we kept everything a big secret. While some might say this would be a good thing, in practical terms, it wouldn’t be. In-store merchandising would be ugly as there would be a horrible mishmash of every color under the sun. It would lead to wastage, and customers wouldn’t get that lovely feeling of belonging to a tribe when they bought the latest thing. So designers and color forecasters talk to one another and share ideas, which is how seasonal color trends are born.

Color forecasting is also cyclical. We’ve all had that feeling of discarding something that seems old in the back of a wardrobe, only to discover it again several years later and think it looks great. The same thing happens with color. Some shades have an expiry date, and we get sick of seeing them in the shops (remember the natural linen explosion in the 1990s?). These colors get retired, and further down the line, when we start work on a new season, they suddenly look great once more because we haven’t seen them for ages.

That’s why trends we thought were finished make a comeback, like the Memphis Design trend of the 1980s, which became popular again in recent years.

So here’s the spooky bit: A weird thing happens when I attend the Pantone meeting to help decide which colors will be chosen and curated for the season we are working on.

The color panel consists of many people living in several different countries. We speak different languages and have different cultural interests. Before the meeting, we work independently in our own country, curating our own personal color palettes to present to the rest of the group.

When we have all presented, we look at common ideas between our individual presentations and build on these commonalities to present the final set of palettes. But very often, for no reason we can fathom, we all pick the same weird little shade that we just felt attracted to. The Pantone books we refer to have several thousand shades of color to choose from, yet we all find one or two particular shades that really call to us for that season. Witchcraft? Who knows, but it feels like magic when this happens, and I, for one, will not question that too closely. 

You must stay on top of seasonal color trends in whichever design area you work in. Using trending colors can help brands feel fresh and current and influence consumer buying decisions. Now that you understand a little about color forecasting, you can start to anticipate color shifts and plan your designs in advance.

Envato’s unlimited library of creative assets can help you surf the wave of seasonal color trends and adapt your designs quickly. Whether you need imagery or video templates, graphics, or fonts, you’ll find everything you need to freshen up your designs rapidly. Learn more in our posts on the Pantone Color of the Year and color psychology.