Can you keep a secret?
In the Color of the Year game, staying mum is a requirement. That was the deal with Owens Corning Roofing when they chose us to take on the Shingle Color of the Year project, elevating shingle marketing above the fray.
In the world of roofing, performance marketing is king. While that focus on durability and protection is important to consumers, it leaves out an important element of every homeowner’s choice: color. The roof is up to 40% of a home’s exterior—a major decision aesthetically, too.
In the past decade, the Owens Corning Roofing marketing team had a new idea: what if this hard-working element of the building materials industry—home roofing—got the design hype it deserved?
It was what ushered in the birth of SCOTY, the acronym for the Shingle Color of the Year and a more than eight-year collaboration between the Owens Corning Roofing and Interrupt.
“SCOTY is probably one of the best-kept secret projects we have,” said Senior Project Manager Angie Coakley. “It’s akin to efforts by Sherwin Williams and Pantone to emphasize and celebrate the work that goes into devising colors. It’s awesome that Owens Corning Roofing entrusts us with keeping it a secret.”
The color, which is selected early each calendar year, is held as a closely-guarded secret until its launch in October. In the meantime, Interrupt’s core SCOTY team gets to work devising the elements that will help introduce the newly created or elevated color with area sales managers and their contractor clients.
“Only a small project team knows what the color will be each year, and we do this buildup with the contractors throughout the entire year,” Coakley said. “The contractors get pretty hyped up about it.”
The project is assigned a secret code name so that the ten to twelve team members on the project can discuss it freely without giving any hints.
"In terms of marketing strategy, the secrecy around the reveal is so important, because otherwise you deflate the excitement of the full-on, big reveal to the public," said Associate Art Director Chris Graver. “We’re definitely doing everything we can to keep that bottled up.”
Graver was first brought on to the project to devise ways to present shingles to consumers in the context of a full exterior design—something no other shingle manufacturer was doing.
“I think one of the most exciting things about working on Shingle Color of the Year is that we get to really dig into trends, whether it’s what’s trending in homes, looking at everything from paint color to shingle color to sconces going on the exterior. We really get to dive in and think about exterior design in a fun way.”
Every year the project starts by creating a signature image around the Shingle Color of the Year that speaks to the color’s inspirations. For Bourbon, the 2022 Shingle Color of the Year, the signature image featured a silky stream of actual bourbon being poured into a glass in front of a fireplace. It was a design full of the same toasty golden shades that made the shingle’s dark sea blues sing.
The other elements of the nationwide campaign are drawn up from the signature image. Those always include a major print and digital ad campaign, media outreach, and for the sales managers, kits that include specially designed t-shirts, hats and color-specific touches. For Bourbon, that was actual bottles of bourbon specially branded with a label design by Graver.
“We were able to activate Bourbon in a really interesting way,” Graver said. “We did bourbon tastings along with the campaign, too. All the branded items that went out to the sales team reinforced the wider theme and emphasized the beauty of that color.”
Style boards further show homeowners how each granule of color blends together in a shingle to create opportunities for elevating the exterior with other complementary shades in shutters, door colors and porch decor. It showcases how the exterior can be elevated and thought of in a much more intentional way with the roof, according to Graver.
“Each product we create is really an extension of this story,” said Graphic Designer Hayley Kandik. “Those products are your chance to set the scene and introduce this new color world bit by bit before they get to the big reveal.”
“The first time I heard the word SCOTY, I had to ask what it was because my only reference was the engineer on Star Trek Enterprise,” said Senior Copywriter Dan Tischler. “I was quickly told what SCOTY actually meant, which in and of itself becomes quite secretive.”
Tischler is one of several copywriters who have worked on a Shingle Color of the Year project. The beauty in the writing process, he said, was that it was an opportunity to wax poetic in a world where hard-driving vocabulary related to performance is the norm.
“It’s that chance to really think differently, that it’s not just about performance, which is important, but also about how it fits into the design of a home,” Tischler said. “It’s design-forward, it’s color-forward. It’s a chance to think about your home exterior and the color of your shingles in a whole different way, like you would a piece of art or something that you thought very carefully about when you picked out paint color or a siding color.”
The Owens Corning Roofing 2025 Shingle Color of the Year is Merlot, featuring granules of warm gray, oaky brown, and spiced sienna with deep crimson and earthy purple undertones.
This year the project was elevated through a collaboration with Erin Napier of HGTV, who created a series of videos about how she would “pair” Merlot with different exterior colors.
Work will begin soon on the announcement for 2026, but the project team isn’t giving up any information so far.
“You think I’m gonna tell you?” said Coakley when we asked for a hint. “You’ll have to wait until the next big reveal.”
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