The Secrets Of Pantone’s Coffee Colors Revealed!

For the first time, Pantone, the world’s most popular standard-setters in color, announced not one but two colors of the year. That means 2016’s fashion and home decor items will wear their fair share of Serenity and Rose Quartz. In the market maybe for a pastel blue Keurig K250 brewer that comes with a contrasting mug in powdery pink?

Pantone has stated that this “more unilateral approach to color is coinciding with societal movements toward gender equality and fluidity.” Right on. But did you know that the 53-year-old company, headquartered in the industrial wetlands of Carlstadt, New Jersey, has many other hues with names that smack of the tastes of the times? And that includes coffee.
Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, answered a few questions for Sprudge about coffee and colors.


At least 14 Pantone colors have coffee or coffee-related names—Turkish Coffee (19-0812), Coffee Bean (19-0915), Chicory Coffee (19-1419), Mocha Mousse (17-1230), Coffee Liqueúr (18-0930), and Café au Lait (17-1227)—to name a few. How did the company come up with them?
Many of these names first came about in the latter ’90s, when what I have referred to as the “Starbucks phenomenon” came about. People were starting to meet in neighborhood “cafes” and became accustomed to seeing the deliciously rich coffee drinks in a more sophisticated way than a simple cup of “coffee” with an equally simple name. There is a romance implied here—an expectation of beautiful drinks surrounding the varying shades of brown and the names reflect that specific color and flavor .