Lora DiFabio will provide an in-depth look into our Key Colors from CMG's 2025+ World Color Forecast™. Learn what these colors are and why these colors are key color directions in 2025 and beyond.

History & Background to CMG's Key Colors

In 2011, Color Marketing Group® (CMG) introduced regional Key Colors for the World Color Forecast™. Each year since then, the Regional Forecasts include a Key Color selected during the regional color steering.  Taking into consideration the evolution and proliferation of color consumption in various market sectors, and the deepened understanding that a single color does not occur in isolation, but rather concurrently with other colors and within spaces and environments shared by many, it became apparent to revisit the notion of Key Colors.

Evolution

To this effect, for 2023+, instead of a single Key Color for each region, CMG's Executive Committee introduced a compendium of three Key Colors per region. While each selected Key Color represents one of the three Color Stories of the Forecast, together they establish a color harmony that works well in combination or as a stand-alone color.

The color harmony is an exclusive CMG member-benefit only giving members the advantage to introduce products in one or more of the Key Colors.

CMG will continue announcing one Key Color known as CMG's "Main Key Color", while the other two colors will be called "Supporting Key Color". On the printed and digital collaterals, all three colors appear with the same caption, "Key Color".

Key Color Selection Process

The regional Key Color is selected out of the 16 colors included in the regional forecast. The choice is made based on the color direction of the forecast, the importance of the color family to the forecast, the significance of the specific color to the color direction, and how the color best represents the Color Stories or the general mood of the stories.

Before the final choice is made, various colors are shortlisted by the steering committee. The shortlist is based on various parameters, which may include one or more of the following:

1. The number of times a color was submitted by participants during a ChromaZone®​​. Sometimes, it's not the exact color that is submitted various times, but variations of it.
2. The color was selected as a ChromaZone®  Story Key Color or ChromaZone Key Color.
3. The most predominant color family in the Forecast. This is based on the number of colors within a color family.
4. The most unexpected color in the Forecast, but closely related and representative of the general mood of the Color Stories.
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Shortlisted colors are discussed one by one with an explanation of what they signify and symbolize, and why they will be important to represent the forecast. Following discussions, the committee votes on the colors until one color ends up with the most votes.

Lora Di Fabio

Design & Development Manager

American Biltrite Flooring 

Sherbrooke, Canada

Lora Di Fabio is the Design & Development Manager at American Biltrite where she leads the design development of flooring products and marketing materials.

After receiving her BFA (Honours in Graphic Design) from Concordia University, Lora worked at Industrial Design firms and corporations where she specialized in colour and graphic applications on consumer products. She has lectured on the subject of Colour in Manufacturing at the University of Montreal School of Design where she facilitates a yearly colour trend workshop.

Previous to her present position, Lora worked for large design firms and corporations like Bombardier where her team received an Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA) award for their work. Other distinctions include the Advertising Excellence Award from Architectural Record and recently a Good Design award from the Chicago Athenaeum.

A member since 2006, today Lora sits on the Board of Directors of the Color Marketing Group and serves on the CMG Color Forecasting Committee where she helps steer the North American colour forecasts. Lora is also a member of the board of the Colour Research Society of Canada.