Pantone's 2026 Color of the Year Is a Dreamy Breath of Fresh Air — Here's How They Picked It

When it comes to decorating our homes, we all rely on a variety of inspirations and motivations to make your choices about what we're going to use and the themes we're going to pick. Color inspiration, style inspiration, and even fun hobby themes can all guide us in our choices.

Among those inspirations is Pantone, the standardized color matching system that paint companies and designers rely on.

Every December, they release a new Color of the Year ahead of the coming year to inspire and help predict what kind of colors will dominate the upcoming style seasons. For 2026, their choice was interesting. But how exactly does Pantone pick the Color of the Year?

As it turns out, it's a complicated process that seems to be a mixture of instinct and data. According to Pantone's website, the Color of the Year is chosen through "thoughtful consideration and trend analysis."

They call it a process that is a "culmination of the macro-level color trend forecasting and research that the global team involved with the Pantone Color Institute conducts year-round that informs this selection."

Contrary to popular belief, the company says, they don't gather color influencers in a room and just pick something that they think is popular or catchy. The team that chooses the Color, the site explains, comes from a "wide range of design, cultural, and geographical backgrounds."

And it's not just the color that they consider. Pantone explains that the name they choose needs to "help tell the story."

The site adds, "Names immediately conjure up an image and a feeling. We want to make sure that the name of our Pantone Color of the Year resonates and can easily and intuitively convey the message we are looking to send."

For 2026, the color picked was "Cloud Dancer," a soft, ethereal white.

Why exactly do we have a Pantone Color of the Year to begin with? According to Pantone, it started in 1999 to "engage the design community and color enthusiasts around the world in a conversation around color."

In other words, it was likely a marketing campaign meant to tie people's color knowledge to Pantone in a way that would be hard to separate. And it seems to be working.

The company uses a global team of "color experts" who live all across the world, but somehow come to a consensus on what the Color of the Year should be.

When you think of a color-matching system, or look at a color swatch for painting, it's likely you've interacted with the Pantone system without even thinking about it. It's become so ubiquitous that we almost don't think about how ever-present the color codes are in our lives.

By drumming up enthusiasm for the Pantone system every December, the company is reminding people of the way their work is tied to our everyday color choices.