Pantone has unveiled its color of the year for 2024: Peach Fuzz, a soft peach-beige that the company of color aficionados says is meant to embody “our desire to nurture ourselves and others.” The hue is “a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body and soul,” according to Pantone.
“In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a color radiant with warmth and modern elegance. A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless. said Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, in a statement shared on the company’s website.
In a social media post announcing the latest color of the year — and marking the 25th anniversary of Pantone’s annual color program — the company further described Peach Fuzz as “subtly sensual” and “heartfelt,” with the intention of “bringing a feeling of tenderness and communicating a message of caring and sharing, community and collaboration.”
Pantone’s Vice President Laurie Pressman said in an interview published last year on the company’s site that each color is decided annually by a group of the institute’s members who hail from various industries, backgrounds and locations, and who come together to weigh in on color trends throughout the year to help predict what’s coming next.
“We discuss our color psychology and color trend research looking to connect the mood of the global zeitgeist with the corresponding color family. From there, we drill down further to identify the exact right shade,” Pressman said in the interview, which coincided with the unveiling of Pantone’s color of the year for 2023. The hue color forecasters picked was a reddish-pink called Viva Magenta — a bold choice compared with previous years, and the prediction held up.
Pressman explained more broadly that the institute searches each year for a shade that both reflects and draws attention to the intersection between culture and color, to “engage the design community and color enthusiasts around the world in a conversation” about the relationship between the two. Each color of the year aims to show how color can used as a mechanism to express whatever is happening culturally in the world at a given time.
“It is a color we see crossing all areas of design; a color that serves as an expression of a mood and an attitude on the part of the consumers, a color that will resonate around the world, a color that reflects what people are looking for, a color that can hope to answer what they feel they need,” she said.
Past colors of the year
Before Viva Magenta, Pantone’s color of the year for 2022 was Very Peri, a periwinkle blue that the company said should display “a carefree confidence and a daring curiosity.” In 2021, the color of the year was a combination of Ultimate Gray and Illuminating, which was a bright yellow hue. And the color of the year in 2020 was Classic Blue, a shade meant to embody the desire “for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era.”
What is Pantone?
Headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, the company is primarily known for creating the Pantone Matching System, a standardized color index that began as tool for commercial printing and is now used for graphic design, fashion design and product design, as it allows creators and manufacturers world over to compare and match shades within the uniform system. Today, Pantone’s color matching system is used as a digital and non-digital resource.
“Pantone provides a universal language of color that enables color-critical decisions through every stage of the workflow for brands and manufacturers,” the company writes on its “about” page. It adds: “Pantone’s color language supports all color conscious industries; textiles, apparel, beauty, interiors, architectural and industrial design, encompassing over 10,000 color standards across multiple materials including printing, textiles, plastics, pigments, and coatings.”
