Today’s design landscape poses an interesting question about the tension between an ever-accelerating trend cycle and a growing desire for looks that will last. Designers are seeking ways to give their clients something that feels alive right now but will still be worth living with for years to come.

It’s a question we put directly to the experts who have spent their careers dwelling inside that tension – our Trendsight Team^℠. They bring a variety of design perspectives, along with deep passions for fashion, fine art, product design, and color theory to the question of what makes a color, style, or design detail truly last. We asked them to walk us through how they actually do the work of separating signal from noise, looking beyond the fads and into the future, and giving designers the tools to understand trend directions rather than chase trend-driven decisions.

Every forecaster we spoke to described some version of the same discipline: waiting for convergence before calling something a trend. “One of the biggest things we look for is whether we’re seeing the same signals emerge across multiple industries,” explains Ashley Banbury, whose primary specialty is homeowner trends and who led the team’s Color of the Year selection for 2027. “When we come together and start spotting similar color directions and consumer shifts across categories, it often indicates something bigger is happening. Those cross-industry connections help us identify trends with staying power.”

Emily Kantz, one of the key color strategists behind our annual Colormix^® Trend Forecast, described watching for the same pattern across channels rather than categories: whether a color is showing up consistently, and – more importantly – whether it “connects to broader cultural, lifestyle, or consumer shifts. Those underlying drivers are often what indicate a trend has longevity and is worth watching versus being a passing moment.”

Sue Wadden, Sherwin-Williams Director of Color Marketing, declares that “a single sighting is a curiosity. When the same idea shows up in three places that have no reason to be talking to each other – that’s when we start paying real attention.” But the more revealing part of the process is what comes next: asking what human need actually sits underneath the color. “Trends that endure are almost always answering something: a desire for grounding, for permission, for optimism. Fads are answering novelty, and novelty has a very short shelf life. The faster something spikes, the faster it goes.”

As the head of our Industrial Wood DesignHouse in Greensboro, North Carolina, forecaster Maggie O’Hare’s process starts somewhere more personal. She looks for inspiration, and trusts her own intuition, when observing fashion runways, art, and the instincts of other taste-makers. “I use my pattern-recognition skills as a barometer for what’s going to be the next big design wave.”

For the Trendsight Team, forecasting follows two very distinct paths. The first involves identifying an emerging trend worth watching instead of something that can only be a short-lived fad. And the second comes when an established trend begins to take deeper, more established roots.

“Near-term forecasting is about specifics: which hue, which value, which pairing feels right for that window,” Sue says. “Long-term forecasting is about direction: Is the culture moving warmer or cooler, quieter or louder, more saturated or less?” And by translating those findings into resources for designers, like our annual Colormix^® Trend Forecast, Sue and her team hope to provide an undeniable advantage. “A designer chasing trends will feel behind every eighteen months. A designer who understands direction can make a confident decision today that still reads well in ten years.”

This is because the Trendsight Team focuses their attention on trend horizons that can vary widely depending on the category. Ashley and Emily primarily look one to two years out for home interiors trends, with Emily describing near-term color as “often an extension of what’s already happening today,” and longer-range work being “about recognizing the signals before they become trends.” These discoveries find their way into the annual Colormix^® Trend Forecast.

“Our job isn’t to be first,” Sue says of the Trendsight Team’s role in color forecasting. “Being first and being wrong is expensive, and being first and being right too early is functionally the same thing. Our job is to be right on time – to have the color ready for the season a designer needs it.”

Maggie’s team thinks in terms of decades, with industrial wood and exterior building products trend cycles lasting anywhere from 10 to 12 years and cabinetry and flooring usually only a few years shorter than that. Colormix Foresight, our industrial color trend program that combines futurist insights with innovation research, forecasts market trends five to seven years ahead, guiding luxury brands and industries from appliances to furniture as they shape the colors and coatings of tomorrow.

We asked the team about the Rewild Continuity Colors from the 2027 forecast specifically. What separates a color meant to hold up for years from one destined to feel dated within a season? Ashley looks for “shades that have a strong foundational quality rather than feeling tied to a specific moment or trend. The best long-term colors act as a canvas for evolving styles.” For Emily, it’s colors with “nuance, balance, and a quiet depth to them, often layered blends of multiple tones with a muted undertone.”

Sue connects this directly to how the Rewild Continuity Colors represent the larger cultural shifts influencing design – and allow for strategic implementation across residential, commercial, and industrial markets because of how deeply they’re rooted in macro and mega trends. “A major driver behind the Continuity Colors is a growing preference for renewal over constant novelty. The colors most likely to endure are those that balance innovation with heritage; these are the ones that will be relevant not just today, but for years to come.”

So what do the experts say distinguishes a bold, current color from a long-term classic? They reveal that it’s less about the color itself and more about what the color is being asked to do.

Sue says that a statement color is designed to be felt. “It’s often high chroma, decisive, emotionally specific. We’re testing it for impact. Does it land? Does it hold attention?” These are the defining qualities of a color that requires intention, a careful hand and a sharp eye for what level of intensity will actually work. Maggie recommends making bold statements in places like drink tables, kitchen islands, entryways, or architectural accents. “Risk-taking in small doses is always a safe bet,” she believes.

A color we can call a classic, on the other hand, is tested for the opposite quality: Can you live with it? Sue says this is where undertone discipline becomes essential. It’s one thing if a color functions as a foundation or a versatile backdrop, but true timelessness is in the details: whether it stays true as light shifts, styles evolve, or furniture and décor are changed. “Statement colors are meant to be loved intensely and then released,” in Sue’s opinion. “Classics are meant to be forgotten about, but in the best way. Both are legitimate. Trouble only starts when you ask one to do the other’s job.”

So, are today’s trends and timeless favorites total opposites, or is one quietly building the other? The experts on our Trendsight Team see them not as completely separate ideas, but as two stages of a much longer and more complex lifecycle.

Ashley sees a direct lineage: “Before a color or design style becomes timeless, it typically begins as a trend. As they become woven into the way people live and design their homes, they transition from trend to classic.” Emily agrees. “Trends often introduce new ideas, while timeless colors are the ones that continue to resonate after the trend cycle fades.”

We asked about the many ways that Sherwin-Williams supports designers navigating this tension in theory, in the studio, and in real client work. Emily described a philosophy of layering rather than overhauling: “Rather than encouraging designers to completely redesign a space around a trend, we often show how trend-forward colors can be layered through accents, focal points, and complementary palettes that work with more enduring colors.”

Sue says that the architecture of the annual Colormix Trend Forecast was built around this exact problem, and that beyond the forecast itself, the Design+ Trade Program provides designers with what Sue calls “the practical things – samples in hand, an Account Executive who knows your market, color consultation support, CEU courses, and visualization tools so you can test a bold idea before you commit a client to it.”

We asked our Trendsight Team experts what colors are currently on their radar as “more than a moment,” and across the board, they’re seeing that earthy tones and elevated richness are on the rise and very likely to remain relevant in the long run.

Ashley is tracking “nature-inspired colors, but with a touch more energy and optimism woven in,” and cites our 2027 Color of the Year, Celery SW 6421 (154-C1), as a particularly inspired choice. Emily says she is watching two threads at once: “expressive, nostalgic, story-driven color palettes” alongside “deep, immersive, nature-inspired hues, particularly earthy charcoal browns, forest greens, and rich mosses,” which she says is tied to “a deeper consumer desire for spaces that feel restorative, authentic, and emotionally meaningful.” For Maggie, she is excited about the return of rich reds – “wine and earth, rust and sand” – calling it “a real exploration in the red category.”

And Sue is watching brown do something structurally significant, not seasonally trendy: “It functions as a true neutral while carrying real emotional warmth. Gray could do the first thing; it could never do the second. Brown is moving out of accent territory and into the role that greige held for fifteen years – the default, the ground, the thing everything else is built on.”

For any designers, and their clients, who feel called to try a “trendy” color, Sue offers three rules that have served her well in her own practice: “Put the trend where the trend can leave. Paint is the most forgiving surface in the house. Test the color against the permanent elements in the space. Most colors that ‘go wrong’ just weren’t checked against their neighbors. Finally, commit. A trend used timidly is the thing that looks dated fastest, because it reads as hesitation. A trend used with conviction reads as intention, and intention doesn’t expire.”

To explore the colors currently on the horizon, our 2027 Colormix^® Trend Forecast, Rewild, is an excellent place to start. Use your Design+ membership to order your complimentary Designer Sample Kit and receive an exclusive lookbook and limited-edition sample set of all 48 colors in the forecast.