Pantone has anointed its 2026 Color of the Year and, in an act of breathtaking caution, selected white. Well, basically white. “Cloud Dancer” is its official name—a soft, contemplative white-adjacent non-color billed as a balm for our overstimulated moment.
I found it ironic that this news arrived days after a KQED profile of the Bay Area house painter known as Mr. Color, who is noted for coating old Victorians in pink so vivid it would make Barbie blush. He calls today’s monochrome house painting fad “an ignorant approach” because it literally brushes over the nuance of decorative Victorian architecture. Agreed. Moreover, it seems to confirm that our appetite for color is shrinking faster than our patience for anything that stands out.
I’m not against white. It has its uses. So does primer. In fact, there are few things more pregnant with possibility than a freshly gessoed canvas or a blank Google Doc. And yet, when the global color authority leans this hard into blankness, it feels less like a design choice and more like a surrender. Literally, a white flag.
Color theory—so far as I understand it—reminds us that color has its uses. Contrast tells the eye where to go. Warmth or coolness shifts mood and depth. Red is hot. Blue is cold. Most kindergartners can explain this, and most humans (apart from my color blind dad) are wired for color.
Trichromatic vision didn’t develop so early hominids could color coordinate cave paintings and fur. It helped us read the environment—and each other. One theory is that trichromacy evolved partly to detect emotional cues: the blush of embarrassment, the flush of anger, the pallor of illness. Also, when do we know a fruit is ripe? In other words, color is information that helps us read the world. By this token, Pantone is functionally illiterate—or assumes we are.
A close cousin of color theory is color psychology, which suggests that blues settle, reds alert, greens stabilize. And plaid makes one proclaim, “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our FREEDOM.”
But Pantone’s language around Cloud Dancer frames color as something to step away from altogether—as if saturation itself has become too forward, too demanding, too … much. One can read their press release and get the impression that it’s not the color white they’re championing but the relief of not having to commit to a color at all.
San Francisco’s Mr. Color operates from an entirely different ethos: If a building has personality, color is how one lets it speak. His pinks and yellows reveal structure, highlight ornamentation and animate shape. The buildings tell him who they are, and he answers in pigment.
The London Image Institute makes a similar point, albeit in a more corporate idiom: Color isn’t an accessory; it’s communicative. It telegraphs intention—confidence, warmth, seriousness, approachability. Imagine if one’s wardrobe was all “Cloud Dancer.” That’s not freedom of expression; that’s what’s worn in an inpatient facility.
I accept that Cloud Dancer will have its following. A white that promises quiet is an easy sell in a loud world. But the urge to retreat into neutrality is what got us into this situation in the first place.
Mr. Color, for all his exuberance, reminds us of something simpler: A place looks more like itself when one is not afraid to let it.
‘Bohemian’ editor Daedalus Howell sees a black door and wants to paint it red at dhowell.com.
