Grey and yellow? Pantone hedges its bet on Colour of 2021

Pantone has selected two opposing viewpoints on how 2021 will play out, as evident of its ‘colour of the year’ which is both ‘ultimate gray’ and ‘illuminating’ yellow.

We get it: 2020 hasn’t exactly gone great (which has prompted Black Mirror to dedicate an entire episode to the ‘Death of 2020’) and considering Pantone chose a soothing blue tone to represent the year in question, it missed its mark.

So next year, Pantone has picked two opposing colours – thereby hedging its bets. On the one hand, everything could be nice and bright: yellow. And on the other, it could be another year of chaotic darkness: grey.

This is only the second time the paint brand has chosen two colours to represent a single year (in 2016, it chose Rose Quartz and Serenity).

For colour nerds, ‘ultimate gray’ is the first achromatic shade to be selected for Colour of the Year. According to Pantone, it represents “feelings of composure, steadiness and resilience.” Sure it does.

Yellow on the other hand, is supposedly “bright and cheery.”

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