Color of the Year 2027: Color Trend Forecast

Color of the year 2027 picks have already started rolling in, and unlike past years, they're splitting in two clear directions. Paint brands are leaning into soft greens. Fashion forecasters are calling for something bolder entirely.

Here's why that split matters: most coverage right now just lists what each brand picked, brand by brand, with no read on which one actually matters for what people buy and wear. Trendalytics cross-checked the signal behind each pick before making a call of our own.

Trendalytics' Color of the Year 2027

Luminous Blue is our pick for 2027.

As a trend forecasting tool, we flagged this color rising across search behavior, product movement, and early retail demand well before most year-end roundups started publishing. That's before we even looked at what other forecasters were calling.

What makes this pick stronger than a single company's opinion is what happened next: once we cross-checked outside sources, multiple paint and design brands had independently reached for tones in the same blue-green family, even while naming their picks differently. That kind of unplanned overlap across separate industries, using separate research methods, is usually a stronger signal than any one brand's announcement on its own. It's a real, growing shift, not one company's opinion.

How We Forecast Color of the Year Calls

Most color of the year roundups repeat one brand's press release and call it coverage. That's reporting, not forecasting.

Trendalytics builds its forecast from a few key signals instead:

• Official announcements from major paint, fashion, and design forecasting bodies
• Our own search behavior data across US consumers
• Retail and product demand signal, not just brand marketing pushes

A color only earned real weight in our forecast when it showed up independently across more than one industry, not just one brand's press release.

That process is also why we didn't just default to the most famous name on the list. Some Color of the Year picks are genuinely strong signals. Others are closer to a single brand's design story, dressed up as a bigger trend.

Every Other 2027 Color of the Year Pick, Ranked by Fashion Relevance

Luminous Blue wasn't the only color forecasters landed on this year. A handful of paint brands made their own picks, each worth a closer look for what it signals beyond the wall.

Celery (Sherwin-Williams)

A soft, glowing yellow-green with herbal, organic undertones. Sherwin-Williams positioned it as calm and refreshing, aimed squarely at interiors. For fashion and retail, it signals that soft greens have real staying power heading into 2027, even if this particular shade started in paint rather than apparel.

Grounded (Behr)

A warm, mossy olive with subtle brown undertones. This pick leans earthy rather than bright, closer to a neutral than a statement color. It reinforces the same green momentum as Celery, giving fashion buyers a second, independent confirmation that olive and moss tones are worth stocking going into next year.

Soulful Sage (AkzoNobel)

A soft, silvery sage designed to feel calming and light. Like the other paint picks, it's built for interior spaces first. Its relevance to fashion is more about validating the broader green trend than offering something directly wearable, though sage has crossed into apparel in past seasons.

Cottage Blue (Valspar)

A mid-tone neutral blue mixed with soft gray. This is the pick with the most crossover potential into fashion, since a muted blue like this works as easily in a garment as it does on a wall. It's a quieter cousin to Luminous Blue, better suited to basics and layering pieces than statement items.

What These Colors Mean for Fashion and Retail Buyers

Color of the Year picks used to live almost entirely in the paint and interiors world. That's changed.

Luminous Blue is the clearest fashion signal on this list, and it's strong enough to justify early buying decisions around outerwear, denim, and accessories. The green cluster — Celery, Grounded, and Soulful Sage, points to a genuine cross-industry shift toward soft, earthy tones, which usually shows up in fashion a season or two after it appears in home and interior categories.

Buyers watching only fashion runways risk missing this kind of signal entirely, since it often surfaces in adjacent industries first.

How This Plays Out Across the US

Color adoption doesn't move at the same pace or in the same direction everywhere, and 2027's picks are no exception.

• Northeast: cooler tones like Luminous Blue and Cottage Blue tend to land fastest here, echoing the same early-layering pattern that shows up with seasonal color trends generally.
• West Coast: earthy greens like Grounded and Soulful Sage typically resonate strongest here first, fitting an already-established preference for natural, relaxed tones.
• Midwest: adoption tends to follow close behind the coasts rather than lead, making it a useful mid-cycle checkpoint for gauging how far a color trend has actually spread.

South and Southwest: warmer, earth-toned picks like Grounded tend to have the longest shelf life here, similar to how warm spice tones outlast cooler colors in these regions each fall.

Common Mistakes Brands Make With Color of the Year Content

A few mistakes show up in this kind of coverage every single year:

• Treating one brand's pick as the whole story; Sherwin-Williams' Celery is a real signal, but it's an interiors pick first, not confirmation of a fashion trend on its own
• Publishing before all major brands have announced: a partial picture early in the season often gets the framing wrong once the rest of the field weighs in
• Ignoring cross-industry signal: the strongest color calls, like Luminous Blue this year, show up independently across multiple industries, not just one brand's marketing push

Final Word

Color of the year 2027 comes down to more than one brand's announcement. Luminous Blue carries the strongest cross-industry confirmation for fashion and retail, while the wider green cluster from the paint industry points to where interiors and apparel are likely headed together over the next year.

This is the kind of forecasting Trendalytics is built for: separating a real, cross-industry signal from a single brand's design story. Want to see how our trend forecasting tool can guide your next season's color strategy? Get in touch to find out.

FAQs

1. What is the color of the year for 2027?
Trendalytics, WGSN, and Coloro named Luminous Blue as their top fashion color for 2027, while paint brands like Sherwin-Williams chose Celery, a soft yellow-green.

2. What color did Trendalytics pick for 2027?
Trendalytics is backing Luminous Blue, based on strong cross-industry confirmation from both fashion forecasters and independent green-toned paint picks pointing to the same broader shift.

3. Why are there different colors of the year for 2027?
Different industries run separate forecasting processes. Paint brands focus on interiors, while fashion forecasters like WGSN and Coloro focus on apparel and textiles.

4. Is green or blue the bigger color trend for 2027?
Both are trending, but for different reasons. Green shows up consistently across the paint and interiors industry, while blue has stronger backing from fashion-specific forecasters.

5. How does Trendalytics forecast color of the year trends?
By cross-referencing official industry announcements with our own search and retail signal, rather than repeating a single brand's press release.

6. Will Luminous Blue show up in fashion collections?
Yes. Trendalytics is already seeing early signal for it, and it's also the color WGSN and Coloro named specifically for Spring/Summer 2027 apparel and textiles, not for interiors. 

7. Are Color of the Year picks the same every year across industries?
No. Overlap happens occasionally, like this year's blue-green alignment, but paint and fashion forecasts are produced independently and don't always match.