Colour trends and palettes

A trend is a direction that is developing or changing – as with fashion, which is constantly evolving. Colour trends are how we describe certain colours or colour palettes (selected groups of colours that are used together) that become popular at different times. Knowing about colour trends is useful in design fields like fashion and textile design, interior design, product and packaging design and web design, where new products are continuously emerging.

Commercial colour charts are easy to find for paints and textiles. In design, the Pantone Matching System (PMS) for graphics and print and the Pantone Fashion, Home and Interiors System (FHI) for textiles and pigments have become industry standards for colour selection for a wide range of design and commercial production solutions.

The Pantone Colour Institute has also become known for its colour trend influencing. They select a “colour of the year” each year.

The 2023 Colour of the Year is:

PANTONE
18-1750
Viva Magenta

Here are some past Pantone colours of the year (Table 1.3):

Pantone past colours of the year.

Aesthetics of colour palettes

A colour palette is a set of colours that a designer or artist chooses to work with on a project like an image, website, fashion range, product packaging etc.

Choosing the right set of colours can play an important role in how successful your design, artwork or product is and how users respond to it.

As previously discussed in this chapter, colour perception and aesthetic taste are subjective things, but colours do have common links to our emotions and moods. Any artist or designer will have their preferred palettes for working with specific projects. However, if you have a design brief from a client, you may need to create a unique colour palette for your client’s website or product. It can be difficult to know which colours work best together, and if those colours successfully symbolise or represent your client’s business.

Many online tools can recommend currently trending and aesthetically pleasing colour palettes or can help you create your own palettes by using keyword searches. Other online tools allow you to upload images to create a colour palette from the colours used in the image, or use AI to create colour palettes based on machine learning.

See Chapter 3.5 Colour wheels and relationships for more information on colour palettes and an interactive colour wheel.

Also, see Chapter 3.4 Pigments and dyes for examples of famous artists’ painting palettes.