What Pantone’s 2025 Colour of the Year Says About Design

Every year, Pantone announces a Colour of the Year to engage the design community in a conversation around colour. The choice is supposed to capture a collective mood or theme that’s been relevant to the world over the past 365 days. For 2025, it’s Cloud Dancer: an off-white that Pantone’s colour experts say represents “calming influence in a frenetic society”.

Opinions have been divided. Critics say it’s boring, tone-deaf, and (literally) colourless — while defenders and Pantone representative argue that it’s the ultimate colour of self-expression, a blank canvas for creativity.

To us, Cloud Dancer represents a year of interior design and architecture defined by quiet luxury and simplicity. Having completed thousands of microcement installations across Melbourne, we’re seeing a rise in clients who want spaces freed from excess, and designers who want to place focus on form and architecture rather than ornamentation. Say what you want, but classic white might be one of the best colours for that job.

And while some of Pantone’s bolder choices might date as the years pass, Cloud Dancer’s appeal lies in its timeless neutrality. Whether you think it’s plain or perfect, there’s one thing you can’t deny for a basic warm white: it’ll always work in architecture and interiors.

Cloud Dancer isn’t stark or clinical. It’s a warm, organic hue that aligns closely with 2025’s movement toward subtlety in design. This colour speaks to a deeper desire for serenity and timelessness in the home, something Australians are leaning into more than ever.

It pairs perfectly with the tonal warmth of popular finishes: timber, natural stone, linen, and surface renders. It allows a room to feel bright and expansive without sacrificing warmth, especially when paired with the minimalist, tactile and incredibly adaptable finish of microcement.

Related Reading: What is Microcement?

Materials like X-Bond bring Cloud Dancer to life through architectural surfaces that feel soft, sculptural and beautifully calm. Materiality transforms into an experience: where handcrafted texture and variational tone provides depth and movement that paint alone can’t achieve. Anyone who thinks Cloud Dancer is boring hasn’t seen the tonal variations of hand-trowelled X-Bond walls in the light, or the way it makes curved forms feel carved and honed from the earth.

Cloud Dancer is a great anchor for microcement’s matte, tactile finish. The trowel marks create variation that’s missing from flat, one-dimensional materials. White microcement creates interiors that feel calm and spacious. It’s a choice for Australian homes leaning into a “less, but warmer” approach, for those who aren’t afraid to strip it back — because louder doesn’t always mean better.