Column: White is the 2026 Pantone Color of the Year. They say the choice isn’t political

In a colorless move that, Pantone says, speaks to our collective longing for calmness, a clean slate, serenity, and focus, the New Jersey-based global color authority named Cloud Dancer — a billowy, balanced white — as its 2026 color of the year.

The blank hue’s uncluttered vibe, Pantone says, plucks us out of the day-to-day crazy of our newsfeeds, AI generated madness, and hustle culture.

White, says Pantone Color Institute’s vice president Laurie Pressman, offers relief and respite. White noise silences the cacophony of worry rattling around in our overstimulated brains. The color gives us permission to think, refocus, and chart a new future.

The pause between the doing, white is the be-ing.

“White speaks to the value of measured consideration and quiet reflection,” Pressman said. “It represents a future free of toxicity and excess … contentment and peace, unity, and cohesiveness. It’s ethereal. White embraces the clouds.”

Sweet dollops of whipped cream are white, meringue is white. Fluffy mashed potatoes are white, too.

A fresh pair of Air Force 1s, patent leather go-go boots, a clean tee, a crisp button-up. A voluminous bridal gown. We ski in winter white.

White is fly.

“In fashion and interior design, white is in our comfort zone,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. “It’s natural, and organic. It’s about sustainability.”

White is ethereal. She’s dreamy. She represents new beginnings. I’m overwhelmed, too. I would love to drop my precepts and jump into a world of my own making. Architectural white shirts and black pants are my grown woman fashion go-to.

I get it.

But y’all, white is the color of the year in 2026.

As a Black woman living in Trump’s America, I can’t help but wonder if Pantone’s choice of Cloud Dancer was much more of a nefarious harbinger than they perhaps realized.

No, I don’t think Pantone is low key promoting whiteness or advocating for a white savior.

Rather, to me, Cloud Dancer is a subliminal acknowledgment of the power structure emerging in America, especially her politics. The Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in universities and the federal government; its attempts to white wash American history; its deportation of undocumented (and documented) brown immigrants; its adoption of white supremacist values: it all point to an America that values white lives more than others.

Fashion and style always gives us clues to the future. So, I asked Pantone flat out if they were tapping into something that perhaps they weren’t even aware of?

“Absolutely not,” Pressman said, her tone pleading with me to stop with the correlation. “Pantone is not political.”

Pantone is not political, true. But its trend forecasters keep their manicured fingers on the pulse. And in this moment I’m unable to ignore Ku Klux Klan robes are white, too.COY is always right

Pantone’s Color of the Year is rooted in fashion. Its early picks: oceanic Cerulean in 2000; orange Tiger Lilly in 2004; and golden Mimosa in 2009 influenced clothing, accessories, and makeup. As we moved deeper into the millennium, COY was the trendy choice for Kitchen Aids, accent walls, and Post-it notes.

In the last decade, however, color of the year has come to define our collective moods more than just our fashion aspirations.

It’s the aura hovering over the world, indicative not just of the life we have, but the one we want. The colors have become a peek into the energy of the feelings driving tomorrow’s zeitgeist.

That became crystal clear in 2016, the first year Pantone chose two colors — a pink Rose Quartz and a baby blue Serenity. The dual hues were a nod to the emerging blurring of gender lines.

In 2021, Pantone chose two colors again: Ultimate Gray and an Illuminating Yellow.

A year into the pandemic, we were emerging from a 2020 into a hopeful 2021, Pressman explained.

The 2023 color, Viva Magenta, spoke to the vibrant post-pandemic life we craved.

And its 2025 pick was Mocha Mousse, the color of espresso martinis, expensive wood, and me. It made such good sense in a year Black girl magic was at its peek.

Things took a quick turn after. According to a New York Times study, 319,000 Black women have left both public and private sector jobs in 2025, the result of the Trump administration’s cost cutting and DEI Initiatives.A clean slate

A key reason why Pantone chose white is because, Pressman said, people are craving blank slates.

“People have gotten to a point where they see what’s happening isn’t working for them anymore,” Pressman said. “They want something different, new authentic.”

Cloud Dancer hit that nail spot on the head.

The Trump administration is dismantling the Department of Education, killing funding for the arts, scrubbing civil rights departments in federal agencies, and decimating medical research, replacing vaccine recommendations with unsubstantiated claims about Tylenol.

The violent crimes of Jan. 6 protesters have been pardoned. The president has ripped out the East Wing of the White House.

All clean slates and new beginnings. But for who?

Cloud Dancer, Eiseman said, is a throwback to classic fashion, citing Coco Chanel and Audrey Hepburn. Sure, fashion of the “Golden Era” was glamorous. These women were undeniably well-dressed, but it was also a time when white gloves and girdles were the norm, and equally glamorous Black women like 1940 Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel was forced to sit in a segregated section during the Oscar ceremony because her white colleagues didn’t want to sit next to her.

When the conversation turned to the yin (black) and yang (white) of fashion, I wondered aloud if, maybe this could have been a year when Pantone chose two colors: black and white. Perhaps this could signify harmony.

Crickets.

Later, I realized Pantone didn’t pick the cooperative vibe up, because it just wasn’t there.

I’m not ready to wave the white flag yet. In the midst of all this, white remains a shade of hope, purity, and freedom. It’s the color of the Suffragist movement. Pantone’s is simply yet another canary in the coal mine which means I have a lot of work to do.

I can’t afford to have my head in the clouds.