Pantone's 2021 Colors of the Year are... Ultimate Gray + Illuminating Yellow.

As if 2021 wasn't already looking hard enough to navigate, color trendsetters Pantone have announced that this year their color of the year, is, in fact, two colors. This has only ever happened once before in their 22-year history (the other time was in 2016 when they chose Serenity and Rose Quartz). Pantone themselves say the choice of two colors, Ultimate Gray and Illuminating Yellow, is all about optimism, "an aspirational color pairing, conjoining deeper feelings of thoughtfulness with the optimistic promise of a sunshine-filled day." Well, that sounds good to us.

Launched in 1963, the Pantone Color System was originally created to solve the problem of complicated color matching in the printing industry, but this color catalog quickly became incredibly important for the whole design industry. Since the launch of 'color of the year' in 2000, its reputation has grown to the point that the design-conscious now wait with bated breath each year for the announcement. And hundreds of brands take on the task of designing products using the color(s) of the year. So lookout, you're going to see a lot of yellow and grey this year!