Pantone’s 2026 ‘Color of the Year’ Is ‘Cloud Dancer’

Considering that “rage bait” was Oxford University Press’ 2025 “Word of the Year,” the fact that “Cloud Dancer” is Pantone’s 2026 “Color of the Year” makes perfect sense.

This neutral white — not too warm and not too cool — is meant to signal balance, security, a blank slate, creativity and more. That’s an awful lot to expect from one hue, but apparently Cloud Dancer fits the bill in these 24/7 always reachable and always scrolling times. With the average global citizen registering six hours and 40 minutes of screen time each day, and the nonstop news cycle infiltrating many casual conversations, the balm of white is said to provide a reprieve or reset of sorts.  Known officially as 11-4201, Cloud Dancer’s versatility is meant to “provide scaffolding for the color spectrum,” per the team at Pantone.

Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, described Cloud Dancer as “a whisper of serenity,” and “a calming influence.” If Cloud Dancer sounds a little oblique, consider Pantone’s hero image of an unidentifiable woman in a billowy Cloud Dancer pantsuit reaching out toward the clouds. Eiseman said she “appears ready to embrace the clouds and dance on them. The choice is somewhat of a black canvas that symbolizes our desire for a fresh start. Cloud Dancer demonstrates the desire for contentment and feelings of peace, unity,  and cohesiveness.”

Noting how a fresh start may call for some white noise to drown out the cacophony around us, Eiseman said that Cloud Dancer can help to peel away layers of preconceived notions. “The aim is to realize that true strength lies not just in but also in being,” she said.

From the fashion front, Cloud Dancer-like ensembles have been favored for key appearances by such celebrities and public figures as Sabrina Carpenter, Greta Lee, Doechii, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Erika Kirk in recent months. In October, Meghan Markle swept into the Balenciaga show in Paris wearing an all-white ensemble from the luxury house. More recently, Melania Trump has donned a few different white coats in the past week or so including a belted white Dior one for the arrival of the White House holiday tree. 

As a sign of just how non-formulaic choosing the Color of the Year is, one starting point for Pantone was a desire to find “that white noise,” because “there’s so much talk, chit-chat,  back-and-forth with social media, and so much information whirling around us with technology and AI,” Eiseman said. “It’s hard to explain how exactly that you come up with the right color. We come up with the concepts, based on what we’re feeling, what people are telling us and what we’re seeing happening in the world around us.  There’s this whole need to refresh and to restart to let our imagination soar. And it was white.”

Well-aware that some might wonder, “Is white even a color?’ due to its absence of pigment, Eiseman noted how obvious and ubiquitous white is in our everyday lives. The team at Pantone considered Cloud Dancer to be a “safe” color in that many fall back to white by default for such household items as a terry cloth bathrobe, bath towels, and living room walls. Eiseman said, “In a psychological sense, it really is around us all the time and it is a color that is almost a default that people go back to.”

The choice of a shade of white is a first for Color of the Year, which started in 1999 with one question, “What’s the color of the new millennium?” More than anything, Pantone wanted to draw a connection between culture and color at a specific moment in time, Eiseman explained. Pre-2000, while some were fearful of the new millennium and fretted that clocks would stop working, there was also a sense of opportunity, Eiseman recalled. “People thought about, ‘What do we have to look forward to?’ There were so many fantastic things that could be happening.”

In the midst of those competing forces of the negative and the positive, Pantone wanted to bring some sense of hope to people. Choosing “Cerulean” as the “Color of the Year” hinted at how some people were looking up to the skies, the heavens, and the galaxy pre-Y2K for answers to what was ahead, Eiseman said. The choice was such a hit with the media and the public at large that the concept of “Color of the Year” somehow took on a life of its own, Eiseman said. “It shows how color fascinates people,” she added. 

If consumers’ daily diet of an onslaught of email, social media, and near nonstop news weren’t enough, outdoor and other forms of fixed advertising are increasingly becoming video feeds instead of flat imagery, Eiseman said, “So much is coming at us all at once. One of the ways that we described this color is that it’s a quieting whisper in a noisy world. That really says it — the need for this calmness from the barrage around us.” 

Cloud Dancer also dovetails into the wellness trend, which fuels what is a $6.8 trillion global industry, according to the Global Wellness Institute. Eiseman noted how so many wellness products have white packaging “to give that idea that it is clean, pure and good for you,” Eiseman said.

Pantone has lined up sponsors for Cloud Dancer collaborations including Motorola, Mandarin Oriental, Play-Doh, Post-it, Command, Pura and Joybird.