The 2025 edition of the premiere BeNeLux region exhibition, showUP will include an exciting new feature called colourUP, emphasising the key colour trends and themes to watch out for in the seasons to come. Here we take a look at some of the most important colours to have been pinpointed by paint manufacturers and trend forecasting agencies for 2025/26 and beyond, and put them together with products you can discover on the showUP exhibition floor from February 2/3 2025.
Top image: Dutch fashion accessories brand, Iris Nijenjuis
The warm, radiant yellow of True Joy by Dulux and complementary chocolatey goodness of Mocha Mousse, the Pantone Color of the Year for 2025, will help inform home and gift trends in the year to come.
As we walk the aisles at showUP it will be the sunniest of colours – a hue associated with optimism, confidence and positivity – that we’ll have our eyes peeled for, as True Joy is the perfect choice of mood-enhancing colour to elevate home interiors in 2025.
Pantone’s Mocha Mousse (17-1230) is the perfect complement, a warming, brown hue imbued with richness. It nurtures us with its suggestion of the delectable qualities of chocolate and coffee, answering our desire for comfort.
Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute says: Mocha Mousse expresses a level of thoughtfulness and indulgence. Sophisticated and lush, yet at the same time an unpretentious classic, it extends our perceptions of browns from being humble and grounded to embrace the aspirational and luxe.
Images below: The Table, Koda Amsterdam, Studio Harem, Loqi, Secrid, The Brushes, Do Design, Mushie, Roger la Borde, Meet Coco, Wildlife Garden.
Future Forecast
According to the global trend forecasting experts at WGSN and colour agency, Coloro, 2026 will be a ‘year of redirection’ in which the blue-green of Transformative Teal will be top of the colour wheel. This dramatic hue, they say, “aligns with the eco-accountability that will increasingly be demanded by consumers. It is a fluid fusion of blue and green that recognises the diversity of nature and an Earth-first mindset, helping build resilience in the face of complex climate changes. It reflects a new outlook on biology that can be organic or synthetic, natural or post-natural, depending on what is ultimately best for the planet.”
Importantly for the space age, Transformative Teal “evokes ‘the overview effect’ coined by space philosopher Frank White, which expresses the life-changing experience of witnessing our home planet from space”.
Images above: Lexon Design, Emile Henry, Moses, Roll n Eat, Iris Nijenhuis.
Complementing this key tone is the luminous and psychedelic neon of Electric Fuchsia, which has a ‘kinetic and digital quality’ and sits between pink and purple. This is a colour which “has its heart in progressive and provocative attitudes” coming to the fore “against a backdrop of anger and frustration at social disparities…fuelling a sense of escapism.”
Bringing us back to a cooler palette is Blue Aura, a modern tinted grey-blue pastel with a healing quality. According to Coloro “It can be layered or left unfinished and applied to the trend for designing with light. It has a shimmering, vaporous quality that touches on biodegradable designs that disappear as well as recycled industrial waste or tinted plaster.” Futuristic and industrial with cocooning qualities, it will look wonderful in velvet and “finishes that range from powdered and sheer to anodised, metallic and lacquered.
Warming things up for the future is Amber Haze, “a green-toned yellow with a rich and radiant quality that feels both embracing and energising. It has an aged appeal reminiscent of stones and crystals, connecting with the search for spirituality and guidance as people look to ancient wisdom in times of uncertainty.
“This primal hue also draws inspiration from more earthy themes and long-term lifespans, being a colour and material with both a long past and a futuristic outlook. It aligns with the search for more sustainable ways to create colour, as designers and brands explore ancient, earthy pigments and processes.
