Asian Paints Unveils ColourNext 2026: Mapping Culture, Material, and the Futures We Are Building

Asian Paints today unveiled ColourNext 2026, its annual forecast that decodes the cultural, material, and emotional shifts shaping the future of design. Now in its 23rd year, ColourNext continues to be South Asia’s most authoritative intelligence on colour, materials, textures, and finishes offering insights that are globally relevant yet deeply rooted in cultural context.

Since 2003, Asian Paints has studied colour not merely as an aesthetic choice, but as a cultural and material force that shapes how we live, build, and imagine. Each year, the ColourNext team collaborates with leading voices across architecture, art, interiors, fashion, sociology, media, and FMCG to develop a rigorous, interdisciplinary forecast. Over time, it has evolved into a trusted framework for designers, architects, and brands navigating change through design foresight.

The ColourNext 2026 report traces how shifts emerging across science labs, digital culture, architecture, craft, media, and everyday life translate into new design languages and material futures.

Speaking on this forecast, Amit Syngle, MD and CEO of Asian Paints Ltd. said, “Culture today is being shaped in moments of transition where certainty gives way to curiosity, and new ways of living begin to emerge. ColourNext 2026 maps these shifts through colour, material, and design, offering a lens into how people are reimagining presence, progress, and value in a changing world. Rather than treating trends as surface aesthetics, ColourNext 2026 approaches them as cultural movements – systems of thought, behaviour, and imagination that shape how the world is being rebuilt.”

This year’s forecast identifies four interconnected design directions:

IRL, which responds to the absence of choice in algorithmic digital worlds we inhabit where we are the user, product and consumer, and bravely takes a step out into an unpredictable IRL world through presence, tactility, intention, and connection – prioritising attention over acceleration.

Solarpunk, which expresses a post-capitalist desire for regenerative futures, where nature and technology operate in symbiosis and optimism becomes a design strategy, aesthetics an outcome of design, not the intention of design.

Pastoral, which redefines luxury through lineage, locality, and inherited craft. In an age where it’s easy to impersonate authenticity online with the right tools, non-visual cultural capital in land, memory, and ancestral knowledge become true markers of luxury.

Daydream, which offers a soft suspension of time – romantic, translucent, and quietly surreal, where the mind overlays daily reality with poetry, emotion, and light.

At the centre of this cultural landscape is the Colour of the Year 2026: Moonlit Silk. A warm, luminous neutral, Moonlit Silk reflects a collective longing for slowness, familiarity, and emotional grounding in an overstimulated world. Radiant yet restrained, it evokes the softness of worn pages and the comfort of everyday rituals, offering presence without performance and optimism without excess. In a world that often feels overly curated, this colour captures a quiet longing to reconnect with what is real, tactile, and memory-washed. It is the tone of unperformed moments: the soft light of home at dusk, laughter that doesn’t require an audience, comfort that arrives without spectacle. Moonlit Silk becomes a calming anchor for contemporary spaces seeking warmth, quiet confidence, and enduring relevance.

Alongside this, the Wallpaper of the Year 2026, Zanskar, extends the narrative of quiet depth and cultural memory. Inspired by the high-altitude landscape of the Himalayas, the design weaves a trellis of blooming roses across the surface, drawing from the language of traditional pastoral embroidery. Hand-block printed gilver details shimmer softly like moonlight on mountain ridges, adding warmth and subtle luminosity. Both grounded and intricate, Zanskar reflects a renewed appreciation for craft, provenance, and storytelling within the home.

The details to ColourNext 2026 forecast report can be viewed and downloaded from the link below: https://www.asianpaints.com/colour-next.html

This year also marks the introduction of the ColourNext Lab, a dedicated platform for material research, experimentation, and dialogue unfolding slowly, through intentional inquiry. Extending beyond a single form of output, the ColourNext Lab explores how colour and material intelligence can take many shapes, from experimental surfaces and finishes, to systems of care such as heritage conservation, palettes for historic cities, spatial frameworks, and works of art. Rooted in months of hands-on experimentation, the Lab presents research-based inquiry shaped by time, skill, and intent. The ethos is deliberately non-commercial with a priority to explore future possibilities through curiosity rather than ready-made solutions. The Lab reflects a deeper engagement with craft, process, and material intelligence, inviting architects and designers to encounter evolving systems, not final answers.

The ColourNext Lab marks Asian Paints’ commitment to research-led innovation, with the introduction of a limited-edition range of experimental finishes developed exclusively for ColourNext 2026. These surfaces emerge from foresight and the desire to explore what materials might become.

Together, these directions signal a deeper cultural shift: from consumption to connection, from spectacle to meaning, and from speed to presence. The ColourNext 2026 report chronicles their triggers and manifestations across colour, material, texture, space, product, and lifestyle offering a future-facing framework for those shaping the worlds we will inhabit next.