We have to admit that we were pretty surprised by Pantone’s choice for Color of the Year, Cloud Dancer.
If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s basically off-white, and a non-color, as many of you pointed out in our DMs. One follower even replied that she was pretty sure they ChatGPT’d it this year.
Officially, Pantone’s team said they chose Cloud Dancer because it “encourages true relaxation and focus, allowing the mind to wander and creativity to breathe, making room for innovation.”
While reactions have been mixed, plenty of our followers said they love Cloud Dancer for its simplicity and softness.
And we can definitely work with it. If there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s make anything feel elevated and on-brand. In this post, we’re sharing how to use Pantone Cloud Dancer in your brand to create visuals that feel elevated and totally on-trend for 2026.
What Brand Styles Cloud Dancer Works Especially Well For
If you’re a female entrepreneur drawn to clean minimalism, timeless elegance, and brand visuals that feel calm yet elevated, Cloud Dancer can be a great fit.
This soft, airy off‑white offers a blank canvas to communicate clarity, calm, and a refreshed sense of purpose. This subtle hue invites you to step into a space of serenity and quiet sophistication, for your brand, your content, and your audience’s experience.
- Clean Minimalist / Minimal Luxury
- Feminine + Elevated
- Soft Editorial/Modern Editorial
- Wellness / Mindful / Slow‑Living Brands
- High‑End Coaching, Course Creators, Service-Based Brands
If your brand style is about calm authority, subtle confidence, luxury through simplicity, or lifestyle transformation with grace, Cloud Dancer aligns beautifully.
Interpreting Pantone’s Cloud Dancer in Imagery
Our take on Cloud Dancer features soft, airy, minimal imagery curated to help you bring this color into your visual world with:
🤍 delicate layers and draped textiles
🤍 fashion + beauty moments with an understated luxury feel
🤍 lifestyle scenes that feel light, fresh, and intentional
🤍 tonal textures and organic shapes
🤍 elevated neutrals that pair seamlessly with any aesthetic
Whether you’re planning a rebrand, refreshing your website, or creating next year’s content, Cloud Dancer is a trend you can make your own.
How to Use Cloud Dancer in Your Brand
Use it as a “quiet luxury” neutral
Swapping in Cloud Dancer across your branding (website background, social media tiles, product mockups, client‑facing PDFs) immediately elevates your aesthetic to refined, minimal luxury. The softness of Cloud Dancer ensures your visuals won’t feel sterile, but rather inviting and calming.
Let it be a backdrop for bold accents
Because Cloud Dancer is so gentle and low‑volume, any accent color or strong visual like a signature brand hue or a colorful product, will pop beautifully against it. Think of Cloud Dancer as the base note in a perfume: subtle, grounding, but gorgeous when combined with richer notes.
Communicate clarity, calm, and a modern reset
Use Cloud Dancer on brand material meant to feel calm, intentional, or transformative. For example, on course graphics, e‑books, landing pages, onboarding kits, or client presentations. Its “blank slate + serenity” energy invites potential clients to arrive with space for new ideas and transformation.
Pair with textures for depth and richness
Pure white can feel flat. But with Cloud Dancer, if you add textures like linen, raw paper, soft fabrics, natural materials, you can create depth without noise. That’s especially powerful for female‑founded brands that value warmth and a grounded luxe vibe.
Where to Find Pantone Cloud Dancer Stock Images
If you’re interested in exploring more Cloud Dancer aligned visuals, some of our most popular collections fit the aesthetic beautifully: Soft CEO, Content Shoot, Soft Focus, Layered and Fleur all capture elements of its dreamy, minimal mood.
But if you want the easiest place to start…
Our team handpicked images from across the entire Haute Stock catalog and curated them into one Cloud Dancer edit.
It’s perfectly aligned with the shade and energy of Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year.
We shared a peek of our Cloud Dancer edit on IG and knew we struck the perfect balance when we got this DM: “I like what you put together for this aesthetic and that it has some warmth and beiges for contrast which are desperately needed to pull off the light aesthetic. Good job!”
You’ll find the exact collection already curated for you inside the membership.
It’s the easiest way to keep your content feeling current, cohesive, and elevated as we step into a new year of visual trends.
You’ll unlock it all the moment you become a member
Key Takeaways
- Cloud Dancer is Pantone’s first white‑hued Color of the Year. It’s a soft, balanced off‑white designed to evoke calm, clarity, and a fresh start.
- It acts like a blank canvas, ideal for letting other brand colors, textures, or design elements shine.
- It’s perfect for brands seeking a minimalist, elevated, tranquil aesthetic. Especially in feminine, wellness, coaching, or luxury spaces.
- Use it as a unifying neutral across all brand visuals: web design, social media, product mockups, brand photos, and beyond.
- Pair Cloud Dancer with texture, subtle accent colors, or strategic design elements for depth and brand personality, without compromising serenity.
- You’ll find Cloud Dancer inspired imagery already curated for you inside the Haute Stock member library.
