Otherway has rebranded Naked Paper, formerly known as Naked Sprout, to embrace its natural brown colour, challenge industry norms, and make sustainability genuinely desirable.
For decades, the toilet paper aisle has been dominated by soft, white rolls promising purity and luxury, even if the reality is anything but. Naked Paper, the challenger brand once known as Naked Sprout, is out to flip those assumptions, proving that sustainability can be beautiful, honest, and even a little bit cheeky.
Working with creative studio Otherway, Naked Paper has unveiled a bold rebrand that repositions its unbleached, brown toilet paper as a premium, purpose-driven product in a category that has long relied on bleaching, fluff, and marketing spin. It’s a move that feels both radical and refreshingly straightforward.
Jono Holt, partner at Otherway, explains that the rebrand was rooted in acknowledging a clear shift in Naked Paper’s future ambitions. “Naked Sprout is a great business already, and they have a really loyal following, but their ambitions are huge, and it was clear to us the name was holding them back,” he says.
As the brand plans to pivot from bamboo to recycled paper, including repurposing sources like Amazon parcels, the word ‘sprout’ started to feel limiting and even a bit too festive.
Beyond the name, Otherway took on a challenge many would shy away from. How to make brown toilet paper, a product that instinctively jars against what shoppers expect, feel desirable?
“We thought we have to deal with the elephant in the room,” says Jono. “There’s no point ignoring it as it will never go away.”
By reframing brown as a symbol of honesty and quality, Otherway helped shift the perception of unbleached paper from an aesthetic compromise to a sustainable statement. Jono draws parallels with high-end brands that have celebrated earthy, natural tones.
“When we started to think about the colour brown, you actually see really beautiful brands such as Aesop and LeLabo,” he explains. In truth, white toilet paper is far from natural as it’s a product of industrial bleaching. “The traditional category has spent years convincing us that white is better, but the truth is it’s not,” he adds.
Visually, the new identity is as stripped-back as its name suggests. Minimal typography, restrained use of colour, and a no-nonsense aesthetic stand out in a market saturated with “marketing nonsense,” as Jono puts it. That minimalism isn’t just about looking cool, though, as it supports the sustainability mission by reducing printing impact.
Softness was another critical consideration, given the product’s raw, unbleached character. “People’s first reaction to brown toilet paper is that it must be hard, so the typography was specifically created to imply softness and comfort,” Jono says. While the packaging is consciously pared back, its choices prioritise environmental credentials above all.
In parallel, the tone of voice strikes a confident balance between being playful and sharply credible. Bathroom talk can be awkward, but Naked Paper embraces it with wit and intelligence, never slipping into greenwashing or empty virtue-signalling.
“We wanted the brand to feel intelligent and smart,” Jono notes. “There’s a huge amount of thinking and innovation that goes into making toilet paper that has a very small carbon footprint, so it was essential our brand personality and tone reflected this.”
Clear, factual copy is another pillar of Naked Paper’s fresh identity. In a category where eco claims can often feel murky, Otherway knew honesty would be the only way to earn trust. “Data and facts. That’s all you have. The more data you can share with people, the better,” says Jono. It’s a stance that resonates deeply with the brand’s new name, keeping it stripped-back with nothing to hide.
At its heart, this project is about encouraging a fundamental rethink of how people view a daily essential. By leaning into the natural colour and telling the unvarnished truth about why toilet paper is usually white, Naked Paper invites people to change their own habits and embrace a product that is, quite literally, unbleached and unfiltered.
Otherway’s thoughtful, honest design makes Naked Paper feel more like a lifestyle choice than a compromise, elevating a humble roll of brown toilet paper into a symbol of transparency and progressive sustainability. In a sector obsessed with pristine white promises, it’s a refreshingly down-to-earth approach that might just clean up.
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