How to Decorate With Mocha Mousse, Pantone’s Color of the Year
The versatile chocolatey shade is meant to embody our collective desire for comfort—and opens up endless design possibilities
Every year, for more than six months, the Pantone Color Institute’s team of trend prognosticators scours the cultural zeitgeist and assesses our collective mood to arrive on the Color of the Year. Mocha Mousse, recently anointed as the 2025 selection, is a soft, warm, and chocolatey brown hue that embodies our desire for comfort and coziness. It’s hard to disagree—the earthy shade can evoke a favorite dessert, coffee stirred with a touch of cream, or pair of Skims shapewear depending on who you ask. Laurie Pressman, the Pantone Color Institute’s vice president, sums it up nicely: “a mellow brown hue whose inherent richness and sensorial and comforting warmth extends further into our desire for comfort, and the indulgence of simple pleasures that we can gift and share with others.”
According to interiors experts, the versatile color du jour also offers endless possibilities for decorating. “[It] opens up a world of design options,” says Ashley Stark, creative director of the family-run carpet and fabric company that bears her name. “This shade feels timeless yet on-trend and it’s clear that we’re returning to the comforting embrace of colors that ground us.” Whether in a light-filled beach house or dimly lit reading nook, the calming hue can drench an entire room and still feel refined and inviting. When used sparingly, it can bring out the personality in companion colors like cream, blush, and peach, the latter of which Pantone named color of the year in 2024. (That can hardly be said about Brat green—or the clashing pinks and greens that emerged everywhere during Wicked’s high-budget press cycle.)
Terracotta, clay, and caramel shades are surging in popularity for that very reason—it’s no surprise the sandy common areas in Kelly Wearstler’s ever-popular Santa Monica Proper Hotel continue to lure guests seeking a dose of laid-back luxe, or why the shade still saturates offerings by the likes of Soho Home, RH, and West Elm. “With its subtle red undertones, Mocha Mousse perfectly captures this shift towards warmer neutrals,” interior designer and trend forecaster Stacy Garcia tells Galerie, noting a broader shift toward nature-inspired shades. In other words, prepare for a year marked even more definitively by rustic charm, unpretentious neutrals, and back-to-basics palettes that may also whet your appetite.
Below, Galerie shares an assortment of Mocha Mousse–flavored home products and furnishings.
