LONDON 9 May 2023 – WGSN, the global authority on consumer and design trends, and Coloro, the global authority on the future of color, today announced Future Dusk as the Color of the Year for 2025. The sister company also unveiled five Key Colors for S/S25.
Future Dusk (Coloro 129-35-18) is a dark, moody and intriguing hue, sitting between blue and purple. It has a sense of mystery and escapism, and feeds into themes of transition – whether it be moving from dark to light, or dusk to dawn – making it perfect for a period of immense change.
Its surreal and otherworldly qualities align with the influence of the second space age, giving Future Dusk a celestial appeal. As science and technology accelerate the space economy, commercial opportunities are coming to the forefront. From space tourism to the rise of asteroid mining, the industry that is slated to mint the world's first trillionaire is rapidly evolving.
Synthetic creativity will become an overarching driver, with tech-driven creative tools such as AI art generators becoming widely available, increasingly blurring the line between reality and fantasy. Future Dusk aligns with immersive and transformative colors, driven by the metaverse, fantasy and imagination.
Future Dusk will be an important color for classic styles and investment pieces: for adding opulence to directional designs, as a gender-inclusive purple, or as an alternative to navy. The shade can be elevated with transformative and metallic finishes that create a celestial allure in beauty and consumer tech, or applied to 3D renders to move it into the metaverse.
Caroline Guilbert, Head of Creative Content for Coloro notes: “For several seasons now Coloro has seen brands shifting towards palettes with long-lasting appeal, Future Dusk is an inspiring color that supports this trans-seasonal approach. It appears warm and deep which makes it feel moody, mysterious and timeless.”
Urangoo Samba, Head of Color for WGSN adds: “Colors that bring a sense of reassurance will be key for 2025 and we will see captivating tinted darks gaining momentum. In the near future, the lines between reality and fantasy will become more blurred than ever - Future Dusk is an immersive and transformative color, aligned with this direction.”
Future Dusk
Coloro: 129-35-18
About WGSN x Coloro - The partnership that delivers Color of the Year predictions unites WGSN’s trend forecasting expertise with Coloro, a global color system that offers physical and digital solutions to ensure color accuracy. Each season, WGSN experts choose tones for the company’s forecasts directly from Coloro’s extensive library of 3,500+ contemporary colors. Health checks are run, utilising Coloro’s feasibility data to understand their achievability across core substrates. Anticipating achievability upfront ensures wastage is minimised in the production process.
Caroline Guilbert adds: “This dependable blue will be essential to reinforcing a sense of trust and stability, but as a purple it also carries an imaginative quality that will dynamically power the creation of new futures.”
Credit: WGSN x Coloro
Transcendent Pink
Transcendent Pink is a barely-there hue that feels more like an elevated neutral than a traditional pink, giving it a grounding and balancing appeal. This dusty colour is already being seen in virtual worlds and soft AI, such as the digital spaces created by metaverse company Pax.world and architecture studios Grimshaw, Farshid Moussavi, HWKN and WHY, which are inspired by roadside inns along the ancient Silk Road. As such, it connects with the fantastical appeal of immersive online spaces, and the ability of these spaces to transcend beyond borders. A sense of stability also underpins Transcendent Pink; its comforting and cocooning quality that will feel especially relevant during a period of polycrisis, when consumers will be more drawn to foundational mid-tones and neutrals. As a versatile colour that can span across genders, demographics and seasons, it will also be commercially dependable.
Aquatic Awe
Aquatic Awe is a transformative turquoise that celebrates the strange and wondrous aspects of nature, but it also has a synthetic quality that connects with digital themes. This duality bridges fantasy with reality, calling to mind bioluminescent sea life, fragile ocean ecosystems, and immersive virtual spaces. This colour aligns with evolving approaches to wellness, whether achieved through physical or virtual applications. It is also influenced by a growing focus on bio-synthetic streams, whereby bio-manufacturing and lab-grown materials are used as a more resource-efficient alternative to using natural materials.
Sunset Coral
Sunset Coral is an energising and feelgood colour that appeals to the pursuit of joy. Its saturation level also gives it an immersive quality, which taps into the virtues of slowing down as a form of self-care, and embracing idleness – which has traditionally been looked down on – as an antidote to our obsession with productivity.
This intense sunset shade encourages resetting to prioritise life’s pleasures, and speaks to the growing importance of escapism amid challenging times, as well as the rising influence of conscious hedonism, whereby moments of pleasure are fused with a sense of purpose
Ray Flower
Ray Flower is a radiant yellow with a warm and inviting quality. It is inspired by regenerative practices that protect biodiversity, such as the work of UK-based multidisciplinary designer Jess Redgrave, whose ClimaFibre project proposes using sunflowers as a single source for materials production, providing everything from cellulose for textiles to pigments for dyes.
This colour has an inherently optimistic and wholesome quality that aligns with a growing focus on more radically considerate approaches to sustainability, where the environment is treated as a co-client in design and production, and nature is treated as a board member in business. Its radiance also connects with the lunar eclipses that will occur in 2025, linking this yellow hue to every part of nature, from Earth to space.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
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WGSN is the global authority on consumer, lifestyle and product design trends, helping brands around the world create the right products at the right time for tomorrow’s consumer.
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ABOUT COLORO
Coloro is the future of color. A beautifully designed system, backed with a technically sound approach, providing the product design sector with the freedom to create and execute color with total confidence. Coloro offers physical and digital products, drawing from an extensive library of 3,500 contemporary colors and expert advisory services. For more information, visit coloro.com.