Pantone announces the 2024 Colour of the Year

This is 25th anniversary of company picking a yearly colour

Pantone has announced its 2024 Colour of the Year, marking the 25th year in a row it has chosen a signature hue.

The code for this year’s hue is 13-1023 and is called “peach fuzz”. The website describes it as “a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul”.

Every year since 1999, the Pantone Colour Institute has selected a colour as its Colour of the Year, which the organisation believes is representative of contemporary society.

The global colour authority views the colour as one that is in-between orange and pink, and meant to “capture our desire to nurture ourselves and others”. The colour organisation also described the peachy hue as a warm and cosy shade that highlights “our desire for togetherness with others and the feeling of sanctuary this creates” in times of turmoil.

“Pantone 13-1023 Peach Fuzz brings belonging, inspires recalibration, and an opportunity for nurturing, conjuring up an air of calm, offering us a space to be, feel, and heal and to flourish from whether spending time with others or taking the time to enjoy a moment by ourselves,” Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, said in a statement on the website.

The company explained that this specific shade was picked to “evoke a new modernity,” while “bringing a feeling of tenderness and communicating a message of caring and sharing, community and collaboration”.

“Drawing comfort from PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz, we can find peace from within, impacting our wellbeing,” Eiseman’s statement read. “An idea as much as a feeling, PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz awakens our senses to the comforting presence of tactility and cocooned warmth.”

The statement continued: “The colour we selected to be our Pantone Color of the Year 2024 needed to express our desire to want to be close to those we love and the joy we get when allowing ourselves to tune into who we are and just savour a moment of quiet time alone.  It needed to be a colour whose warm and welcoming embrace conveyed a message of compassion and empathy.

“One that was nurturing and whose cosy sensibility brought people together and elicited a feeling of tactility. One that reflected our feeling for days that seemed simpler but at the same time has been rephrased to display a more contemporary ambiance. One whose gentle lightness and airy presence lifts us into the future.”

Peach Fuzz marks the 25th anniversary of the Pantone Colour of the Year program, which launched in 1999 with the decidedly Zen “Cerulean” blue.

Each year’s selection serves as “an expression of a mood and an attitude on the part of the consumer,” according to the company.

“In the spirit of Pantone 13-1023 Peach Fuzz, we reflect back on the last 25 years of the Pantone Colour of the Year program grateful to provide an avenue where designers and colour enthusiasts all over the world can engage in a conversation about colour, be inspired by colour and showcase their creativity within their communities,” Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute, said in a statement.

“We look forward to continuing this for many more years to come.”