E-Paper
All vibes, no shade: Why Butter Yellow is the colour of the moment
A viral video highlights how color names like Butter Yellow evoke emotions, reflecting trends and personal experiences in design and culture.
Surely it’s popped up on your feed. The video features a dad who’s bemused by the wall-paint shade names that his Gen Z daughter has picked for her room: Nacho Cheese, Pretty Ugly, Sulking Room Pink, Dead Salmon. Now, consider the name of the colour of the moment: Butter Yellow. You know what’s happening, right? The colours on the visible spectrum haven’t changed. We’re just updating their names to suit the mood of the moment.
Butter Yellow’s official name is Pantone 903 C. But over the years, it’s answered to Buttercup, Lemon Chiffon and Daffodil Yellow. And it’s not even Pantone’s colour of the year; Mocha Mousse is. Meanwhile, Millennial Pink – that soft, muted rose tone that was on everything (and everyone) a decade ago – isn’t even one particular colour. It’s Pantone 13-1520, the colour formerly known as Rose Quartz, and its variations. As Sam Shalgaonkar, Pantone India senior regional sales manager puts it, “It’s rarely the exact hue that matters, it’s the story behind it.”
Pantone’s own Color Institute calls on colour psychologists and designers to create palettes that might reflect the changing vibe of the modern world. The experts draw on nature and pop culture to build winning new combinations and christen them with evocative names to match. “These names help designers and consumers emotionally connect with a colour,” says Shalgaonkar. Butter Yellow just happened to land perfectly. It is cheerful without being twee, optimistic but not forced, playful with a hint of mischief.
Dr Siddharth Warrier, neurologist at Namaha Hospital, Mumbai, says that the way we react to colour involves both nature and nurture. We see, think, and make connections based on our own mind and memory. So, what seems like Prostitute Red for someone may well look like Bridal Red for another. “It’s a sensation that exists only in your brain. Colour doesn’t exist in the real world,” says Yogesh Gaikwad, 49, director of the Society of Dyers and Colourists in the UK and India. Warrier says that a colour’s name and how we imagine it depends on our experiences. Not everyone can distinguish between the many shades of yellow, so (as with food) adding Butter helps.
Butter, globally, is paler than the yellow shade everyone’s obsessing over. In Japan it is almost white. In France, it ranges from pale to golden, depending on the cow’s diet. In Britain and America, both butter and margarine were often artificially dyed from the 19th century onward, to signal richness. Over time, yellow became the default shorthand for “buttery”. It’s why Indians understood right away when the press compared Sabrina Carpenter’s 25th birthday fit, a satin mini dress, to butter this year. We’ve grown up eating Amul, Nandini and Mother Dairy.
Because colour is never fully objective, and can shift with your mood, your health or even how tired you are, it allows the fashion industry to repackage the same hue with a new message over and over, and push sales. “I name shades like I would nickname my friend; the colour tells me what it wants to be, I just listen,” says Masaba, owner of LoveChild. Her cosmetics line includes names such as Okay Boomer, Hukum, CEO Material and Main Character, which give sass more than pigment description. She also weaves in cultural memory through names such as Gulabi Rum and Nani House, which reflect moments from her own life. So, the next time a colour goes viral, consider your own response to it, and your role in its newfound fame.
From HT Brunch, October 11, 2025
Follow us on www.instagram.com/htbrunch
