COLOUR AS A CONSTRUCTED ENVIRONMENT
Colour often feels personal. We experience it as a preference, an aesthetic response or a way of expressing ourselves. Yet the colours surrounding us do not appear randomly. Seasonal fashion palettes, commercially available garments, Colour of the Year announcements and wider visual trends are shaped through networks of colour forecasters, corporations, designers, manufacturers, retailers, media platforms and cultural institutions.
So, who decides which colours become visible, desirable and commercially available?
Identifying the people and organisations involved is only the beginning. The more interesting part is understanding how these decisions are made. What influences the selection of a particular colour? How much freedom does an individual decision-maker actually have? How much of the final outcome is shaped by corporate strategy, market expectations, consumer data, manufacturing limitations, cultural forecasting or economic interests?
In other words, where does individual creative agency end and institutional influence begin?
WHO SHAPES COLOUR TRENDS?
The colour forecasting industry is made up of a relatively small number of influential organisations. These include Pantone, WGSN, Coloro, Intercolor, Peclers Paris and Trendstop. Their work is connected to fashion brands, manufacturers, retailers, interior companies, beauty brands, product designers and media platforms.
These organisations do not all operate in exactly the same way. Some focus on colour standards, some on trend forecasting, some on consumer research and some on translating colour predictions into commercial strategies. Together, however, they form part of a wider system through which certain colours become more visible and commercially available than others.
A colour may begin as a forecast, become part of a seasonal palette, appear in design presentations, move into product development and eventually reach shops, websites and social media. By the time consumers encounter it, the colour may have already passed through several layers of interpretation and selection.
This makes colour less like an isolated aesthetic decision and more like the outcome of a network involving cultural conditions, trend forecasting, institutional interpretation, corporate decision-making, product development, retail availability, media circulation and consumer exposure.
REPRESENTATION IS NOT THE SAME AS INFLUENCE
These questions become particularly important when we consider who occupies positions of cultural and corporate decision-making power.
Historically, senior corporate and institutional leadership has been disproportionately white and male. Although many organisations are becoming more diverse, numerical representation does not automatically mean equal influence. The presence of women or people from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds in leadership positions does not necessarily mean that their perspectives are included in strategic decisions. Research on women directors also suggests that their contribution depends heavily on the openness of the board and the behaviour of its chairperson (Nielsen and Huse, 2010).
Being present in the room does not necessarily mean having the power to shape what happens in that room.
This is why demographic diversity alone cannot be treated as evidence of genuinely diverse decision-making. The same issue extends beyond gender. Ethnicity, culture, geography, socioeconomic background, education and lived experience can all influence how people interpret the world around them.
Individuals do not experience visual information from a completely neutral position. Their memories, cultural references, values and aspirations can affect what they notice, value or consider desirable. This does not mean that a person’s gender or ethnicity determines their aesthetic preferences. That would be far too simplistic. However, different lived experiences may contribute to differences in what people notice, prioritise and imagine as possible.
BACKGROUND, POWER AND AGENCY
The question of individual influence can also be considered through the Upper Echelons perspective. Hambrick and Mason (1984) argue that organisational outcomes and strategic choices can be partially influenced by the backgrounds of senior managers. This suggests that the experiences, values and perspectives of people in leadership positions may shape the organisations they lead.
However, this does not mean that senior executives have unlimited freedom. Research on managerial discretion shows that executives do not have the same level of influence over every type of decision. Their power depends on the organisation, the industry, the market and the specific decision being made (Crossland and Hambrick, 2011).
A creative director, executive or colour forecaster may therefore have significant influence over how a colour is interpreted, but their choices may still be shaped by manufacturing costs, client expectations, brand identity, consumer research, production timelines and commercial risk.
The colour system should consequently not be understood as a simple hierarchy in which one powerful person decides what everyone else will see. It is better understood as a network of people, organisations and constraints, where the final colour that reaches consumers is the result of multiple decisions.
CLOUD DANCER: A CASE STUDY
The 2026 Pantone Colour of the Year offers a useful case study. Pantone selected PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer, an airy white associated with calm, simplicity, reflection, clarity, creativity and the possibility of a fresh start (Pantone, 2025).
This makes Cloud Dancer interesting beyond its appearance. The point is not to decide whether the colour is objectively good or bad. Nor is it to suggest that one individual personally caused the colour to be selected. Instead, Cloud Dancer allows us to examine the cultural assumptions and institutional processes through which certain visual qualities become desirable.
Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute, has publicly explained Cloud Dancer through ideas of quietness, clarity and renewal (Pantone, 2025). Her role makes her an important figure within the colour forecasting system. However, it would be too simple to assume that the final decision is entirely hers.
How much decision-making power does one person have within a larger organisation? How is the decision negotiated? What kinds of research, market information, client expectations and industry pressures influence it? How does the colour move from a forecast into products and eventually into consumers’ everyday environments?
These questions shift the focus from the individual decision-maker to the wider system.
FROM FORECAST TO CONSUMER
The final stage of this process is particularly important. If the colours available to consumers have already been filtered through a relatively small number of forecasting and commercial systems, then personal preference may not be completely independent from the environment in which that preference develops.
This does not necessarily mean that corporations deliberately try to make society conformist, passive or “robotic”. That would be a strong claim and would require specific evidence. However, it does raise an important issue: repeated exposure can make certain colours feel normal, familiar and desirable.
A colour that appears repeatedly in fashion, interiors, advertising, packaging and social media may begin to feel like an obvious choice. Other colours may become less visible, less available or less socially familiar.
This does not mean that consumers have no agency. People can reject trends, reinterpret them and create their own combinations. Colour forecasting can also introduce new possibilities and provide people with fresh tools for self-expression.
The tension is that the same system can both expand and limit visual choice. It can introduce new colours while also concentrating attention around a relatively narrow set of commercially supported options. It can encourage creativity while simultaneously making certain forms of creativity more visible and profitable than others.
COLOUR, IDENTITY AND POWER
Colour is therefore more than an aesthetic detail. It sits at the intersection of identity, cultural experience, institutional power, creativity, commerce and social conditioning.
The people and organisations involved in colour forecasting do not simply predict what society will like. They also participate in creating the visual conditions through which preferences develop. Their decisions influence what becomes available, what becomes familiar and what becomes easy to find.
This is why it is important to look not only at who is represented within decision-making spaces, but also at who has the power to influence outcomes. A diverse board, team or organisation does not automatically produce diverse results. What matters is whether different perspectives are heard, taken seriously and allowed to affect the final decision.
The colours around us are shaped by people, but also by systems. They emerge from the interaction between individual perception, organisational power, commercial pressure, cultural interpretation and material constraints.
Understanding this process does not mean rejecting colour trends or assuming that all commercial colour systems are harmful. It means becoming more aware of how visual environments are constructed and how they may influence the ways we understand, express and develop our identities.
Ultimately, the question is not simply who chooses the colours around us, but who has the power to make those choices matter, which perspectives enter the process, which are excluded, and how those decisions eventually become part of the visual world in which individuals construct and express themselves.
REFERENCES
Crossland, C. and Hambrick, D.C. (2011) ‘Differences in managerial discretion across countries: How nation-level institutions affect the degree to which CEOs matter’, Strategic Management Journal, 32(8), pp. 797–819. Available at: https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/smj.913 (Accessed: 28 August 2026).
Hambrick, D.C. and Mason, P.A. (1984) ‘Upper echelons: The organisation as a reflection of its top managers’, Academy of Management Review, 9(2), pp. 193–206. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/258434 (Accessed: 28 August 2026).
Nielsen, S. and Huse, M. (2010) ‘The contribution of women on boards of directors: Going beyond the surface’, Corporate Governance: An International Review, 18(2), pp. 136–148. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8683.2010.00784.x (Accessed: 28 August 2026).
Pantone (2025) ‘Pantone Colour of the Year 2026: Cloud Dancer’. Available at: https://www.pantone.com/eu/en-eu/color-of-the-year/2026 (Accessed: 10 February 2026).
Leave a Reply