Pantone’s Color of the Year Sounds About White

After the year we’ve had, going with Cloud Dancer can easily be interpreted as a piercing dog whistle.

In sharp contrast with last year's “Mocha Mousse,” the Pantone Color Institute revealed today that, for the first time, the color of 2026 is a white hue. The Institute describes “Cloud Dancer” as “a discrete white hue offering a promise of clarity,” but in today's polarized sociopolitical climate, this selection offers disengagement at best and channels rage-bait at worst.

“The cacophony that surrounds us has become overwhelming, making it harder to hear the voices of our inner selves,” Pantone Color Institute Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman explained in the press announcement. “A conscious statement of simplification, Cloud Dancer enhances our focus, providing release from the distraction of external influences.”

But it's not so simple.

Let me be clear, announcing white as the color for 2026 can easily be interpreted as yet another piercing dog whistle closing out a year that, in conjunction with other ongoing horrors, brought us:

• Elon Musk's questionable gesture bearing a troubling resemblance to a Nazi salute at a rally on the day of Donald Trump's second inauguration.
• Trump's executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution's “divisive, race-centered ideology” and Truth Social rant about museums focusing on “how bad slavery was.”
• The rage-bait final boss that was Sydney Sweeney's “Good Jeans” marketing campaign with American Eagle, followed by her non-response to criticism of the ad as racist.
• The Supreme Court lifting restrictions that prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Los Angeles from racially profiling during stops and raids.
• Trump's ban on immigration applications from 19 countries, including Somalia and Afghanistan, while offering "refugee status" to White Afrikaners in South Africa.

With all of that to consider, Pantone has done a swell job of stirring the pot that keeps boiling over ... Clearly, I've taken the bait, and I'm not alone. Compared to last year's uproar about Mocha Mousse supposedly resembling poop, it's a relief to see that some have maintained their skepticism and lack of enthusiasm for Cloud Dancer, which social media users have since deemed a “recession indicator,” “sterile and lifeless,” and an “extension of conservatism.”

But while Pantone tries to invoke the color's connotation as a fresh start or blank canvas, remember that the white of a new sheet of paper is born from the brown-trunked trees that were planted, nurtured, cut, pulverized, bleached, and pressed. Understand that in terms of light, white is not an absence but a reflection of all visible colors.

Today, however, the white of Cloud Dancer just feels like a commercialized equivalent of a landlord special. Slapping a fresh coat of paint over a wall of dings, chips, and nail holes doesn't fix them. Those “external influences” shape and change us, whether we want them to or not.

The people have spoken ... (all screenshots Rhea Nayyar/Hyperallergic via X)

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