Aqua Mist sets the colour trend for 2025

The catwalks of the world’s top fashion shows are usually the place you expect to find the trends for the season or year ahead when it comes to colour. But as automotive design becomes increasingly about interior colours and materials, who better to set the trend than former Jaguar design boss, Ian Callum, and his team.

Since leaving Jaguar in 2019, Callum has created some exciting design projects. Naturally, some of these have been automotive, including turning the stunning Jaguar CX-75 show car into a road car, creating the weekend plaything, the Callum Skye, working with the Annandale Distillery to create the Callum Whisky and crafting signature pieces of furniture.

For 2025 though, the team decided not just to follow trends, but to set them, and so it has created its first Colour of the Year. That colour is Aqua Mist, a pastel blend of green and blue that undoubtedly has a hint of Tiffany about it, but is a little brighter.

“Aqua Mist offers a fresh, calming energy,” says Charlotte Jones, colour, material and finishes designer at Callum. “Its soft and cool undertones are associated with tranquility and openness, providing a balanced base that doesn’t overwhelm the senses.”

Before you start imagining an interior covered purely in Aqua Mist materials, something that probably wouldn’t be that tranquil, fear not because the team have also come up with what they call balancing colours. One is Midnight Tide, a timeless and warm deep blue. Neon Riot, on the other hand, is a vibrant hot pink to provide a playful energy to the mix.

These aren’t just colours that the team predicts will play a role in automotive design in 2025 either. Their research suggests we could see them being used in textiles, including fabrics, plastics and leather. They could influence interior design choices in homes and offices and, interestingly, they also see the colours being used in cutting-edge technology.

It’s easy to imagine a wide range of applications for the colour trio across interior design, fashion and product branding. It’s a serious business, but there’s a lighter side to it all too.

“Every design team in the world looks at future aesthetics to stay relevant and appeal to ever-evolving customer tastes. Plus, it’s creative and a lot of fun,” says Ian Callum. “The Callum Colour of the Year 2025 is the first time we’ve made any of our forecasting work public.”

Look out for these colours in 2025 then, but many designers are looking even further ahead. One of Callum’s partners is the famous leather company, Bridge of Weir which has been supplying leather to companies such as Bentley and Land Rover for decades. Its parent company, the Scottish Leather Group, also supplies big names in aviation, private and commercial as well as yachting companies and interior design houses.

Debra Choong is a design manager at Bridge of Weir and she says the company presents colours to its clients up to three years ahead of their introduction.

“We create trends collections, taking inspiration from product design, furniture and fashion,” she says. “We collate all the information that we get and create a collection to showcase the directions colour is going in order to inspire colour, material and finishes designers.”

The latest collection is called the ‘Conscious Collection’, taking neuro-divergence as an inspiration and creating colours that provide a sensory experience. Whether it’s in a car, an aircraft or a home, Choong says the aim is to combine the beauty and comfort of leather with calming colours and inviting textures.

Discussing this at the famous Leathersellers building in the City of London, inevitably brought up the question of the future of leather. Despite some calls for leather to be replaced, many luxury car companies say their customers continue to ask for it and in other industries, such as aviation and yachting, the hard-wearing properties of leather make it hard to replace.

“The biggest challenge we’ve had in recent years is that there’s been a lot of greenwashing,” says James Muirhead, chief commercial officer at Bridge of Weir. “Just because something might be animal friendly or animal free doesn’t necessarily make it more sustainable for the environment.”

Naturally, you might expect that to come from someone whose job it is to sell leather products, but he says consumers are becoming more aware of the reality around many products beyond the hype. Think for a moment about the alternatives to leather, which sometimes contain plastics or petroleum-based resins to bind fabrics together.

“Meat consumption has increased, and there has to be an outlet for all the hides or they will just go to landfill,” he says. “We might as well utilise that waste and if you think about it, it’s probably the oldest recycling industry in the world, after all, cavemen and women used to use skins for clothes.”

The company is continually researching alternatives of course, but Muirhead believes people should have the right to choose what materials they have in their lives. He says it’s not about leather, it’s about the performance and feel of materials. Aston Martin’s design boss, Marek Reichmann, described the Bridge of Weir leather in his car as wearing his favourite driving gloves.

It’s certainly true that leather is hard to replace across many industries. After a few minutes chatting to Muirhead, you start thinking of leather as a byproduct that is surprisingly sustainable.

That’s a topic to discuss among your friends, and while you’re at it, why not discuss the Colour of the Year 2025. Honestly, I’m probably more of a Midnight Tide person, but perhaps we could all benefit from the tranquility of a splash of Aqua Mist in the year ahead.