Picking the color of the year is a delicate process—just ask the pros behind the Benjamin Moore Color Trends 2025 Palette. You have to capture the aesthetic moment, translating disparate trends and emerging design movements into a single, resonant color choice. Since most consumers don’t feel like repainting their home every year, leaning too far into today’s 15-minute trends can tank a brand’s color credibility while leaving their customers cringing with regret.
That search for a happy medium between trendy and timeless explains why Benjamin Moore landed on Cinnamon Slate as its 2025 Color of the Year. At first glance, it might seem like a strong rebuke of Raspberry Blush and Blue Nova, the brand’s highly saturated 2023 and 2024 Colors of the Year, respectively. In truth, Cinnamon Slate represents less of a break from the recent past than the continuation of subtler trends bubbling up to the surface.
Specifically, says Andrea Magno, Benjamin Moore’s director of color marketing and design, Cinnamon Slate takes some of its color philosophy cues from the “easy to live with” shades included in the brand’s 2024 Color Palette, like Regent Green, Antique Pewter, and Hazy Lilac.
Fittingly, that shift from bold, clear colors to a greater sense of depth and intrigue were central to Benjamin Moore’s process.
“One of the things that really stood out for this year was diving into the complexities and nuances of color, talking about undertones and thinking through what makes a given color special,” Magno tells PRO. “The catchphrase we really latched onto was ‘quietly colorful’.”
So what exactly makes Cinnamon Slate quietly colorful? In this case, it’s all in the details just beneath the surface. Compared to some of the 2024 colors previously mentioned, Cinnamon Slate warms things up with the introduction of red undertones. Depending on the lighting, one might perceive the pigment as an earthy, grounded near-brown, or as a violent-tinged shade that harkens back to Hazy Lilac.
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That ability to keep one foot in both worlds makes Cinnamon Slate feeling fresh yet sophisticated. When juxtaposed with neutrals, its trace elements of plum pop out without hogging the spotlight. Flanked by bolder colors or metallic accents, Cinnamon Slate’s brown comes to the forefront for a near-neutral that’s never boring.