Nostalgic, buttery yellow is about to be everywhere

KitchenAid just unveiled its “color of the year,” a retro, comforting Butter yellow. 

While most people are aware of Pantone’s color of the year program (hello, Mocha Mousse), fewer might be clued in to the fact that the beloved appliance company KitchenAid has been running its own version of the concept since 2017. Each year, KitchenAid picks a trendy new hue to outfit a line of its iconic stand mixers. In 2023, the pick was an electric pink Hibiscus, followed by a powdery Blue Salt in 2024. Now the company is all-in on its nostalgic buttery hue. The new mixer retails online for $499.99.

A team of analysts from KitchenAid’s parent company, Whirlpool, work year-round to identify culturally relevant colors for new products. The color of the year program is a way to highlight that work—and, conveniently, it taps into the consumer demand for colorful cookware that has helped brands like Our Place and Le Creuset amass loyal followings. 

Brittni Pertijs is a color, material, and finish design manager at Whirlpool. She says her team has had their eye on yellow for color of the year since 2019, when mustard first started becoming a popular hue. 

“The main goal with the color of the year program is to look at the drivers of social cultural trends and filter those through the KitchenAid brand lens,” Pertijs says. “Then, we forecast how people may want to feel in the year of launch—in this case, those feelings were comfort and optimism. From there, we look at our color tracking to identify which tones seem to be emerging and which align best with interior design trends.”

Butter yellow is an apt choice, given that the soft, retro hue is having something of a modern-day revival. Back in December, Pinterest predicted that 2025 would see a resurgence of youthful primary colors in interior design. In January, the platform spotlighted butter yellow as one of its five colors of the year, given that searches for “butter yellow” on the site were up 115%, while “butter yellow nails” saw interest spike by 1,835%. 

Pertijs’s team identified their perfect butter yellow shade by collecting a range of potential samples, including a vintage butter knife found in an antique shop. The final hue is somewhat brighter than plain butter, but it’s just right to evoke the warm and fuzzy feelings of your grandma’s 1960s-era kitchen.

“Butter is so comforting, yet indulgent,” Pertijs says. “The soft color has just enough energy to spark that feeling of joy. We literally wrote a love letter to Butter as we were building our inspiration around this year’s selection.”

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