A Dark and Stormy Night
For 2025, the paint companies’ annual Colour of the Year picks lean to the deep and dramatic, but also evoke an air of nostalgia, comfort and romance.
By Martha Uniacke Breen
When it comes to the annual Colour of the Year picks from each of the major paint companies, 2025 could aptly be named The Year of the Dark and Stormy Night. These are not the blushing pastels of years past. Yet the effect they create on the wall is often swooningly cozy and enveloping; they look the way that ermine, sable and black velvet feel.
International colour marketing group Pantone’s annual picks are always noteworthy, since they represent exhaustive research over the past year not only in interior design, but consumer goods, graphic design, packaging and even automobile paints. In early December, the company recently unveiled its 2025 choice: Mocha Mousse, a rich mid-brown. Simultaneously indulgent and classic, it’s neither too exotic nor too bland; it’s just right, the colour equivalent of comfort food. (Perhaps it’s a reflection of uncertainty across the world, and a general shift towards conservatism.)
The paint companies’ picks for 2025 are arguably more evocative – at least in the context of home interiors – than the somewhat plain-Jane brownness of Mocha Mousse. Market leader Benjamin Moore’s 2025 pick, Cinnamon Slate, perfectly embodies the notion of nostalgia and fantasy. A velvety brownish-plum, it’s the colour of faded roses, old hand-tinted photographs and antique silks. You can almost hear the Victrola playing in the background.
“I think there’s a real feeling of wanting reassurance in our lives right now,” says BM’s colour marketing specialist, Sharon Grech. “In our homes, that means comforting, familiar colours; we’re longing for balance and substance.”
On walls, Cinnamon Slate has a touchable, velvety look, especially in lower-sheen formulations. But it’s just as pretty in smaller proportions such as trim, combined with a light near-neutral such as Tissue Pink, also part of the 2025 palette, or Sea Salt, a muddy greige that’s a newer take on warm grey.
BeautiTone’s Midnight Flora, a deep, earthy aubergine, conjures “a garden at night,” in the words of BeautiTone colour expert Kristen Gear. “The general mood of our 2025 palette,” she continues, “has that sense of imagination, dreams, stillness, calm and tranquility.”
One of the more saturated of the choices for 2025, Midnight Flora makes a rich, more nuanced substitute for black – a strong trend last year – especially in rooms that receive a good amount of natural light. Try it in a kitchen as a backdrop to light oak cabinetry, or paired with cream trim. Alternatively, it creates a cozy, escapist mood in a den or library, perfect for curling up with a good book.
Dulux’s Purple Basil has a gentle, near-grey undertone that pairs beautifully with creams or soft greens; if you’re not quite ready for the drama of a Midnight Flora, this shade offers a softer-spoken alternative. As a colour taken from nature (it actually does evoke the colour of purple basil leaves), it’s lovely paired with soft greens or natural textures such as stone, light woods and textiles.
Sico’s Starry Night is a pure chocolate brown, but with a warmth that suggests the touchable softness of mink or velvet. (Place a colour chip next to Pantone’s Mocha Mousse, and its purple undertones become clear.) Like Purple Basil, this colour works well with organics like stone or wood but has a richness that equally suits metallics and modern furniture.
Behr’s strong oxblood colour, “Rumors,” is arguably the most assertive of the year’s picks. But as interior designer, TV personality and Behr brand ambassador Amanda Aerin points out, it fits squarely in the familiar-comforting-nostalgic trend.
“There’s a nostalgia about this colour,” she says. “It was popular in the ’90s, and we’re seeing it in fashion, home design and even in make-up this year. It’s all about a craving for roots and familiarity.”
Rumors – and to varying degrees, all of the 2025 colours – is particularly effective for one of the year’s biggest trends in home decor: a technique known as “colour drenching.” A colour-drenched room features the same shade on every surface: ceiling, trim, woodwork and walls, varying only in sheen level. The overall effect is like being wrapped in a cocoon of colour – very popular in bedrooms.
Whether deep and dramatic, or soft and tactile, this year’s palette has an artistry that’s perfectly suited to self-expression. These are complex colours, with an abundance of undertones that’s great as the starting point for a colour scheme. And even if you aren’t quite ready for a full-on treatment like colour drenching, they’re interesting enough that even used more sparingly – as an accent wall, perhaps, or a single painted furniture piece or accessory, is enough to add your own stamp to a room.
“None of these colours are statement colours in the usual sense,” says Benjamin Moore’s Sharon Grech. “It’s all in the way you use them. I think people are ready to use a little more thought, a little more creativity in how everything works together.”
