We’ve had colour on the brain the past few weeks, and not just because of our Colour Trend Report. As Colour 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 colour have any staying power, or any place in today’s interiors?
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 colour 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 colour, 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.”
AD PRO Directory designer Leah Ring also finds joy in all that brat green has to offer—like the ability to “engage with that childhood sense of play and curiosity and wonder that we lose a lot as adults.” As the principal behind Another Human (and someone who has always been drawn to bright colours), she actively tries to push her “colour curious” clients outside of their comfort zones. “Brat green is a little more electric, but we definitely try to get in the chartreuse, lime, or our favourite ‘puke green’ into almost every project,” she explains. A prime example can be found in her psyched-up kitchen of a Yucca Valley home, where a lime hue covers cabinets, floor tile, and the kitchen island. “I would love to see a lot more ‘brat green’ in interiors, I’d love to see people willing to take that risk.”
“Brat green is definitely the colour of youth, and a far cry from the light dull pea green that people associate with hospitals or their grandma’s house, which is a note that often comes up from residential clients,” says Reddy. “In interiors, it could be used beautifully as an accent in wallpapers, or as a trim colour, and in fabrics.” Or you can take an allover approach, as Emma Burns did in her super-chic flower-cutting room in Wisconsin, which features Benjamin Moore’s Jalapeño Pepper.
This story originally appeared on Architectural Digest US.
