Why does one colour question have three answers?
Because the name on the tin is a trade mark, and trade marks are owned country by country.
The clearest statement of that comes from one of the companies itself. DuluxGroup Limited’s own disclaimer page says:
DuluxGroup Limited is an Australian company that owns the trade marks below only in the territories shown below, and does not own those trade marks in any other territory
The territories it then lists for the Dulux mark are Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Samoa. Five of them. Everywhere else, the name belongs to somebody else, and the business publishing under it is not the same business.
Nothing about this is irregular. These are unrelated companies operating in separate territories, which is an ordinary arrangement for a paint name that sells in a lot of places. It only becomes confusing at the moment a search result hands you one country’s answer to another country’s question, which is exactly what happens when you type a colour into a search box and start shopping for art.
The three answers, side by side
| Which Dulux | Company | 2027 pick | Structure |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom, Ireland and most of the world | AkzoNobel | Soulful Sage, described as a soft and silvery green | One named Colour of the Year, announced 8 September 2026 |
| Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa | DuluxGroup Limited | None. No colour of the year is named for 2027 | Dulux Colour Forecast 2027, built as three palettes: Sensory, Play and Treasure |
| North America | PPG, which sells a Dulux-branded line | Unconfirmed. A colour called Birthday Cake (PPG1059-2) is published by PPG, but no PPG source confirming a “Dulux 2027 Colour of the Year” was found for this guide | Unconfirmed |
The AkzoNobel announcement is dated 8 September 2026, four days before this guide went up. The Australian forecast page and the PPG colour page were read on 12 September 2026, so treat those two rows as what those sites were saying on that day.
What did AkzoNobel actually announce?
One colour, with no number attached to it.
The media release, dated 8 September 2026, describes the pick like this:
An ethereal, soft and silvery green, it’s a color that can make your heart glow and your spirits soar, helping you to live lightly.
And, on where it sits inside the wider collection:
And at the center of it all is Soulful Sage - the ultimate versatile green.
The name is a trademark, and the release prints it with the symbol. It is dropped here for readability, and the American spelling inside those quotes is the release’s own.
The release also frames the collection as a broad one rather than a decorating-only palette: “All the colors, textures and special effects in the collection have been designed to light up the senses in a wide range of markets.”
Now the honest limit. This guide prints no paint code, no Light Reflectance Value and no RGB figure for Soulful Sage, because none was verified against a source that could be checked. Any green you have seen on a screen while reading about this colour, including the hero image at the top of this page, is an approximation of it. If you are in the UK, the consumer page for the colour is here, and a chip held under your own lighting is worth more than any rendering of it.
For art, the useful word in that quote is sage, because sage behaves as a family rather than as a single tone. Our room-by-room sage green guide covers what pairs with it and which frame finishes agree with it, and that pairing logic holds whether or not your wall lands on this exact green.
Why does the Australian Dulux name no colour of the year?
Because it does not publish one.
Dulux Australia’s 2027 page is headed “Dulux Colour Forecast 2027” and carries the tagline “Connection and authenticity through colour.” It sets out three named palettes: the Sensory Palette, the Play Palette and the Treasure Palette.
The phrase “colour of the year” appears nowhere on that page. The full page text was checked on 12 September 2026 rather than assumed, because this is the fact the whole confusion turns on.
That difference is not a smaller version of the same thing. It is a different kind of publication, and it asks something different of you. A colour of the year hands you one target to match. A forecast of three palettes hands you three moods and lets you choose which one your room is. If you are in Australia or New Zealand and you went hunting for a single 2027 Dulux colour, the reason you could not find it is that there is not one to find.
Two notes on using that page well. Only the three palette names are printed here, because the individual shade names inside them were not verified for this guide. And if you are pulling the page’s room photography as styling reference rather than as colour reference, the credit on it reads “Photographer Lisa Cohen, Stylist Bree Banfield.”
What about North America?
A Dulux-branded paint line is sold in North America by PPG. If a search sent you in that direction for a 2027 answer, it may have handed you a pink called Birthday Cake.
That colour exists and PPG publishes it. PPG’s page for it gives the code PPG1059-2, an RGB value of 233, 210, 204, a Light Reflectance Value of 67, and this description: “a light, shaded, millennial pink with a silvery undertone.”
Here is what this guide will not tell you, because it could not be verified. That page does not say “2027 Colour of the Year” and does not say “Dulux”. No PPG source confirming the “Dulux 2027 Colour of the Year” framing was found while writing this, so the row stays marked unconfirmed. If you are matching art to Birthday Cake, you are matching to a colour PPG publishes. You are not matching to a named 2027 pick that this guide can stand behind.
The one figure on that page that is useful to an art buyer no matter what the colour is called is the LRV. It sits on a scale where 0 is black and 100 is white, so 67 is a light value, and a wall that light throws a lot of light back at whatever you hang on it. We took the opposite end of that scale apart in LRV 11 versus LRV 17 on a dark wall, where the same number decides mat width and frame tone.
Which forecast are you actually matching to?
Settle this before you download anything, because all three answers are live and only one of them is yours.
If you are in the UK or Ireland. Your Dulux is AkzoNobel’s, your 2027 colour is Soulful Sage, and your art question is a sage question. This blog has already answered most of that one.
If you are in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji or Samoa. Your Dulux is DuluxGroup’s, and you are matching to a palette and a mood rather than to a single colour. Pick one of the three and let it set the register of the art, quiet or playful or rich.
If you are in North America. Treat the Birthday Cake answer as unconfirmed as a Dulux pick, and use PPG’s own published values for what they are, which is a code, an RGB triplet and an LRV.
The rule that covers all three. If you are matching art to a paint chip, match to the paint company that actually sells where you live. That is the only company whose chip you can hold in your own hand, in your own light, next to the print.
How do you match a print to a colour you have only seen on a screen?
Carefully, and without expecting the two to land in the same place.
A screen makes its own light. Paper only reflects whatever light is already in the room. So a green on your monitor and the same green on a painted wall in your hallway at nine in the evening are not the same event, and no printable is going to close that gap. We went through the mechanics in why your downloaded print looks duller than it did on screen.
Three habits survive the screen problem.
Match value before hue. Whether the art reads at all against a wall is decided mostly by how light or dark the two are relative to each other, and only after that by whether the colours agree.
Match the family rather than the code. Sage is a family. A palette is a mood. Both of those you can shop for honestly. A six-digit value you read off a phone screen is not something you can shop for at all.
Let the frame absorb the difference. The frame is the band sitting between the print and the wall, which makes it the cheapest correction available to you once the paint is already up.
Before you buy
Check which Dulux your search result came from before you treat its colour as a brief. The country in the web address is the fastest tell, and a .co.uk page and a .com.au page are two different companies with two different 2027 publications.
If you landed on the Australian forecast, stop looking for a single colour. Choose one of the three palettes and match the mood.
If you landed on the AkzoNobel announcement, you have a named colour and, as far as this guide could verify, no published number to go with it. Get the physical chip before you commit money to art.
If you landed on Birthday Cake, keep the Dulux framing in the unconfirmed column and work from PPG’s own published values instead.
And whichever of the three you are matching to, do not expect a printed sheet and a painted wall to arrive at the same colour. Get them into the same family, hang them in the same light, and let the frame carry the rest.
Pin this guide
Worth keeping if you are painting in 2027 and buying art to go with it. The table is the part to have with you the next time a search result gives you a confident answer that belongs to somebody else’s country.
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