Experts Explain How Taylor Swift’s Color Choices Have a ‘Huge Influence’ on the Hues of Our World

It’s a testament to Taylor Swift‘s culture-shifting powers that within a day of announcing her upcoming 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, it felt like the entire internet was bathed in a tangerine and mint green glow.

Those two hues are the apparent color scheme for the LP, in following with the singer’s history of associating certain shades to define her various eras. There was red, of course, for her Red album, newsprint-like black and dark grey for Reputation, hot pinks and gold for Lover and rustic, burnt orange and tan for the 2020 pandemic album Evermore.

Swift played into those shades with the staging and costuming on her globe-spanning, history-making Eras Tour — including apparently slyly hinting at the orange and green scheme for Showgirl during the outing — which got us thinking about whether the singer’s well-established reputation for shifting pop culture with her carefully crafted imaging has inspired Swifties to color their worlds with the shades of Taylor?

“Colors are powerful emotional triggers, so having her fan base connect each era to specific colors is a brilliant marketing tool,” Sherwin-Williams director of color marketing Sue Wadden tells Billboard. Wadden says the colors we choose for rooms in our homes can greatly influence our moods, with bold ones such as red evoking passion, energy and intimacy. That tracks with Swift’s aptly-named 2012 Red album, an eclectic, mature breakup LP packed with said energy and passion on kiss-off tracks like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble.”

Prince was famously associated with the color purple, and Charli XCX absolutely owned last summer with her lime green Brat aesthetic — but Swift’s wide-ranging choices of signature hues are clearly both on-brand and possibly leading trends.

Wadden said Sherwin-Williams recently launched its 2026 Colormix Forecast, an annual trend report looking at the shades that will define the year — and two of the four palettes, Frosted Tints and Sunbaked hues, “actually mirror the color story of The Life of a Showgirl quite well,” she says. “Frosted Tints features cool, icy pastels in whispers of blue, green, and purple, reminiscent of the mint green on the album cover…. [while] Sunbaked Hues celebrates creativity with warm natural clay, buttery yellow, and deeply saturated red, echoing the orange tones of the cover. It will be fascinating to see how much orange and mint green we notice this fall and winter, especially when paired together.”

The VP of Pantone Color Institute, Laurie Pressman, adds that while the colors we wear and surround ourselves with are an expression of our individuality — influencing how we feel and how we want others to perceive us — Swift clearly understands the important role color plays in the telling the story of her album eras. “She very effectively ties color to how she is feeling, and through the music she is sharing so much so that it becomes a holistic part of her visual expression, and is a central linchpin to her visual persona,” says Pressman.

And while past Swift color schemes have not specifically impacted the work Pressman does at the company that provides the “universal language of color for designers, brands and manufacturers,” she has seen those choices very clearly influence consumer trends in apparel, fashion, accessories, beauty — and choices for the interior and exterior of homes, as well as, naturally, dorm rooms.

“People do contact Pantone about specific colors tied to Swift,” she says — with the most prominent example being the signature deep red lipstick that has become the singer’s signature shade. Though Wadden says she hasn’t personally been asked by anyone in a store to suggest Swift-inspired colors, one of her favorite Swifties has shared with her that, “Lover Pink would be SO CUTE as a paint color!”

She also mentions that outside of the company’s more than 5,000 stores in the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean and Latin America, they’ve received multiple requests from publications asking which Sherwin-Williams paint colors they would assign to specific Swift eras, for articles such as this one. The company was also not immune to joining in on the hundreds of posts from corporations, sports teams, cities and restaurants that quickly hopped on the tangerine/mint Showgirl aesthetic after Swift announced the album last week (see below).

That was no surprise to Pantone’s Pressman, who says that color trends are inextricably linked to culture — and as a global pop culture superstar, Swift has a “huge influence” on color and design trends on the ground. “Her new Life of a Showgirl persona has tapped into the zeitgeist of our time when people are looking for these uplifting vital colors that are full of life,” says Pressman.

Like Wadden, Pressman was elated that someone like Swift is putting such an emphasis on color, specifically with the bold choice of a vivid orange tone with a cool minty shade. “Bold, emotive tones whose unapologetic expression of independent spirit reject conformity and celebrate a personal journey toward empowerment,” she says. “Through the upcoming release of a Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift has harnessed the language of color as a powerful tool to create a shared experience.”

On boyfriend Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast, Swift explained that she picked orange because she’s just “always like it,” praising the color for how it “feels like energetically how my life has felt — and this album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during [The Eras Tour], which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant.”

Pressman is happy that the “vitamin-enriched orange shades” that encourage a passionate intensity and expressive spirit have already spawned the aforementioned social media bandwagoneering from tons of brands, explaining, “We turn to colors that spark smiles and evoke a playful spirit — colors that are friendly, sociable and lift the mood, colors that can infuse every space with happiness, humor and a deep sense of well-being.”

Both women praise the unusual pairing of contrasting colors, which they say sends a strong, authentic message by combining them in an unconventional way. “This is why her fan base loves her so much — because she is so honest in what she expresses,” says Pressman. “And of course we will be interested to see how this color theme may impact consumer trends across lifestyle.”