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We’ve had color on the brain the past few weeks, and not just because of our Color Trend Report. As Color of the Year season kicks off (see our latest coverage of Sherwin-Williams’s predicted palettes here), and forecasters look to 2025 and beyond for the shades that will rule interiors in months to come, senior digital design editor Sydney Gore is here to decode one spectacularly viral shade that has dominated the discourse this summer: brat green. Does the color have any staying power, or any place in today’s interiors? We asked Sydney for intel. —Lila Allen, Associate Director, AD PRO
If you’ve significantly increased your screen time over the past few weeks, you’ve likely been exposed to “brat green,” a souped-up, electric limeade shade (Pantone 3507C, to be exact) drenching social media grids, particularly in the Gen Z crowd. Though its origin was the cover of an album called Brat, Charli XCX’s defacto club soundtrack of the summer, brat green scaled mass proportions when it also became the theme of Kamala Harris’s nascent presidential campaign. (Butter yellow, you’ve already expired!) But what kind of influence does this hue—which has also been dubbed “the color of Internet brain rot,” and which Charli herself has labeled “disorienting” and “uncomfortable”—have in the real-life world of interiors, and the designers who work with them?
“Personally I love it,” says Suchi Reddy, founder of the interdisciplinary design firm Reddymade. Reddy, whose work frequently incorporates principles of neuroaesthetics (the study of how environments impact physical and mental well-being) points out that, scientifically speaking, green is a calming and soothing color, even in a shocking shade. “Our brains are wired to recognize fractals and hidden symmetries that occur in nature, and studies have shown that cortisol levels drop when we see and experience the verdant hues of nature.”
