Playing with color: How Nugget picks its palette

Confession: Our favorite color is “all of them.”

Nobody does color like Nugget® does color. As the inventors of The Original Play Couch™ and The World’s First Play Ottoman™, we’ve set the bar very high when it comes to having tons of custom choices (70+ over time so far!) to match your aesthetic. Our play furniture lives at the colorful intersection of fun, functional, and fashionable.

From Nuggety neutrals to bold brights and every hue between, we love innovating and tinkering with our ever-evolving color palette.

When we release new Nugget® colors and Chunk™ colors, we consider many factors. Sometimes we want something brand new to the Nuggetverse. Sometimes the moment is right to return to a fan favorite — or even drop it in a new fabric.

We caught up with Nugget’s VP of Creative Services and Product Design & Development, Betsy Matz, to help answer the one question we get almost every day: How does Nugget pick its colors?

Team GG: Betsy, everyone wants to know how and why Nugget chooses our colors. You’re in the room when those decisions get made. Where do you get the inspiration for new Nugget colors?  

Betsy: First and foremost, we’re a play furniture company. Big emphasis on “play!” We want our products to appeal to kids (through endless hours of imaginative play), but it’s equally important that our products appeal to grownups (as charming, aesthetically pleasing pieces of furniture that will live alongside their grownup furniture).

To find the right colors, we keep a close eye on trends in interiors and furniture, but we also try to stay ahead of those trends. We’ll read trade publications like WGSN and attend conferences like Dwell and NeoCon to stay up to date on colors, fabrics, and prints. We’ll even draw inspiration from nature or the animal kingdom.

We also try to align some colors to the season. When we dropped Sugarplum in corduroy, we did it right before the holidays. And Blossom was the perfect color to release at the end of winter, when we’re all longing for spring.

We want colors to feel perfect for the season — autumn colors should make you want to cozy up, and summer colors should feel bright and light. And at the same time, each color should be able to bear the test of all four seasons, in case it sticks around for a while.

Team GG: There are often 20+ Nugget color options available at any given time. How do you make sure the overall palette feels right?

Betsy: Our goal is to always have a Nuggety palette of colors that feels unique and fresh to us and to our customers. Whether a person loves neutrals, brights, darks, pastels, jewel tones, or earth tones, they’ll always have a Nugget color to fall in love with.

This means carefully planning color retirements and scheduling new color releases to ensure the palette stays balanced and, well, Nuggety. For example, when cool candy pink Lolly eventually says goodbye (after an incredible four-year run), we'll likely see a new pink enter the line-up.

Team GG: We love hearing from Nuggeteers about their favorite Nugget colors, new and old — and we get a lot of really fun requests for retired colors to return to the palette. Do you ever take those requests into consideration?

Of course — we always want Nuggeteers to love our color line-up, so we definitely listen to their wishlists (believe it or not)! While we can't make everyone’s color, fabric, or print dreams come true, we’re always paying attention to what Nuggeteers are asking for.

For example, a lot of Nuggeteers were hopping into our DMs to request a red for their Nuggety rainbows… and when we forecasted that a poppy red would be trending in 2025, we were super excited to introduce Gumball to the Nugget and Chunk color options.

Team GG: How does Nugget come up with color names?

Betsy: Every single Nugget color name has come from the imagination of a real live Nuggeteer here at Nugget HQ! Sometimes, a small naming committee brainstorms and battles it out, and sometimes, we open it up to a popular vote among our employees. Regardless, most color names are usually two to three syllables and feel playful.

We always look for a name that sparks the imagination (Seamonster, Fairway, Atlantis) and that’s really fun to say aloud (Bellbottom, Waterslide, Dunebuggy).

And guess what? Sometimes we pick a name, and then we change our minds. For example, Heartthrob was almost called Cheeky!

Team GG: From idea to launch day, how long does it take to release a new color or print?

Betsy: It takes longer than you’d think! We wish we could snap our fingers and make it happen, but fun ideas take time to bring to life. Whether it takes months or even years (yes, some ideas have to hibernate until the right moment), almost every single person at Nugget plays a part in the elaborate catwalk of a new color launch — Design, Marketing, Supply Chain, Production… you name it. We’re a team, and we all love playing with color.

Fun fact: Someone at Nugget HQ knows exactly what's coming for the Nuggetverse in 2026 right this very moment! So keep an eye out for clues — we get so excited about what’s to come for our Nuggeteers, we can't help but give hints about upcoming drops.

Team GG: Can you give us any hints for what’s next?

Betsy: Wouldn't you like to know? Maybe there’s a hint or clue in this very blog!

We can say we’re always playing with new ideas here at Nugget HQ — and not just color ideas. There's definitely a lot of surprises in store for the Nuggetverse in the next 18 months, so stay tuned.