A shade of white is rage baiting the internet

Colour trends have always been significant for fashion and design industries for decades, but recent years and social media have amplified their influence. The choices become symbolic of society and culture, what matters to consumers, their ideologies and leanings. Among the forecasting organisations and brands (including Asian Paints in India), Pantone is the most news-making, if not the most influential. The American company’s proprietary colour matching system is used around the world and its Colour of the Year has been a fixture since 1999.

Over the years, Pantone’s choices have often divided opinions in the past, but the newest choice has sparked bafflement over any other sentiment. Announced this week, the Pantone’s colour for 2026 is Cloud Dancer, a shade of white that the organisation claims is “marking a return to ‘simplification’. The announcement included collaboration news with brands such as Motorola, Play-doh, and Post-It, with additional notes on the shade’s utilitarian value for fashion, accessories, home décor and packaging. White is regarded as the absence of colour, its shades standard staples in design, incorporated in everything from fashion and interiors—classic, adaptable, ubiquitous as a basic essential. Forecasting it as a key “colour of the year”, to guide fashion and design brands across the world in new product development has sparked disappointment. Pantone president Sky Kelley said in an event since the announcement that they were aware the colour would be controversial but that white is indeed a colour. “The power of Pantone’s colour of the year is that it sparks a conversation—a conversation that everyone can participate in,” she said. “We don’t dictate that conversation. We facilitate it.”

In her speech, Kelley was clearly addressing social media, for which Pantone creates an abundance of content to share the annual colour trends announcements. Many have declared the shade uninspiring. Others have also noted the choice in a year when DEI (Diversity, equality and inclusivity) policies have been in grave peril in the United States; Pantone is an American company, headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey and describing the shade as lofty white have not helped matters at all. “Boring” is a sufficiently thumbs-down verdict, but the more entertaining reaction gaining virality is “Pantonedeaf”. For a shade meant to be a “calming influence in a frenetic world”, Cloud Dancer has caused much agitation.

Not much of these reactions, however, may eventually matter in India. Homegrown fashion and design brands respond to annual Pantone colours of the year with great enthusiasm, but their engagement is often perfunctory—limited to scouring catalogues to find products in the colour that can be packaged into press releases or social media content. The results are often hilarious, the choice of products in such inaccurate shades that one wonders if the person helming the curation may have been colourblind. In 2025, Pantone chose the colour Mocha Mousse, “a warm rich brown” that came to be interpreted rather creatively into every possible shade of coffee. Viva Magenta,  a nuanced crimson red with pink tones , in 2023 flooded inboxes with fuchsia and what Indians commonly perceive as magenta—a much pinker hue. The colour for 2022, Veri Peri—“a dynamic periwinkle blue hue with a vivifying violet red undertone”—appeared to be particularly challenging. Few seemed to be able to distinguish the shade from shades of purple.

In many instances, the Colour of the Year is forgotten after initial weeks of frenzy. There are simply too many colours to use and celebrate—especially in Indian design. If shades of white recur, Pantone will have little to do with it. White, like black, is always trending and simultaneously trendless. If previous years are anything to go by, Cloud Dancer will likely bring forth every shade from ivory and eggshell to blinding white—all but the “billowing, balanced” Cloud Dancer.