Pantone’s Color of the Year, Cloud Dancer, is a warm, understated neutral that offers structure and breathing room—designed to support other colors rather than compete with them.
Using Pantone’s Cloud Dancer as Structure, Contrast, and Creative Catalyst
Each year, Pantone’s Color of the Year invites makers, designers, and businesses to pause and consider how color reflects the cultural moment we are in and how it might shape what we create next. This year’s selection, Cloud Dancer (HEX #F0EEE9), has sparked a wide range of reactions across the textile and craft industries. Some see it as calming and versatile. Others view it as underwhelming, overly safe, or creatively limiting.
But what if Cloud Dancer is not meant to be the main character?
For textile artists, indie dyers, pattern designers, and fabric professionals, Cloud Dancer offers something subtler and arguably more versatile. Rather than demanding attention, it functions as structure, light, and negative space, creating room for other colors, textures, and ideas to shine.
Understanding Cloud Dancer Through Color Theory
At first glance, Cloud Dancer reads as off white. A closer look reveals that it carries warm, golden undertones, not cool gray ones. When examined digitally, pushing Cloud Dancer to full saturation on a color picker reveals its parent hue, a rich golden yellow around #FFB700.
This matters.
Understanding a color’s parent hue gives designers a roadmap for building palettes that feel intentional rather than accidental. Because Cloud Dancer is rooted in warm yellow, it naturally harmonizes with:
- Analogous warm colors such as ochre, gold, rust, peach, and soft reds
- Earthy neutrals including flax, clay, bark brown, and sage
Complementary cool tones, especially blues and purples, which create contrast and visual tension when used intentionally
Cool colors like denim blue, indigo, violet, or lavender will appear crisper and more saturated against Cloud Dancer’s warmth. Meanwhile, oranges, reds, and pinks will feel blended, cohesive, and grounded.
Rather than thinking of Cloud Dancer as “not really a color,” it is more accurate to think of it as a low saturation warm yellow, one that quietly influences every color placed next to it.
Spun Right Round dyed yarn warm toned palette that would go beautifully with Cloud Dancer.
A neutral Cloud Dancer could give way to a colorful ombre fade like in this Wool and Pine sweater featuring Spun Right Round dyed yarns.
From Theory to Practice: Letting Cloud Dancer Do the Supporting Work
In practice, Cloud Dancer excels when it is treated as a background, framework, or stage, rather than the focal point. This is especially relevant in textile disciplines, where contrast, texture, and pattern readability matter just as much as hue.
Knitwear and Crochet: Background That Makes Motifs Pop
In knitting and crochet, Cloud Dancer can function as a powerful backdrop. Used as a sweater body or yoke base, it allows stranded colorwork, Fair Isle motifs, or playful narrative designs to stand out clearly. High contrast palettes such as deep blues, forest greens, charcoal, or saturated brights read more crisply against it than they would against a stark white.
It can also be used in sections rather than entire garments. Yokes, borders, cuffs, or panels can frame bold design elements without overwhelming them. In this role, Cloud Dancer enhances stitch definition and texture, allowing cables, lace, or surface embellishment to take center stage.
Option 1: Fair Isle with bold color contrast as in the Charlotta the Fourth sock pattern by Natalie Sheldon.
Option 2: Used as a background to make a design element stand out as in The Glimmer Crop by @whimsynorth
Quilting: Negative Space as a Design Tool
For quilters, Cloud Dancer operates much like negative space in modern quilt design. As a background fabric, it allows piecing, appliqué, and color stories to breathe. This is particularly effective in quilts that rely on repeated motifs, illustrative elements, or playful storytelling, such as baby quilts or narrative wall pieces.
Because Cloud Dancer is warm rather than stark, it softens the overall composition while still providing enough contrast for blues, greens, yellows, and pinks to remain distinct. It is an ideal choice for designers who want their quilts to feel light, cohesive, and timeless rather than busy.
Woven Textiles and Embroidery: Letting Detail Take the Lead
In woven goods and embroidery, Cloud Dancer shines as a canvas. Table runners, wall hangings, or yardage dyed or woven in this hue allow intricate embroidery, supplemental weft work, or textural variation to become the visual focus.
When paired with hand dyed embroidery threads or yarns in coordinating palettes, Cloud Dancer recedes just enough to highlight craftsmanship. It draws the eye to stitch quality, color placement, and surface detail, which is exactly where many textile artists want attention to land.
Jackie Rose’s Vivienne Shrug allows for Cloud Dancer to be the backdrop for colors to sing.
A Creative Challenge, Not a Constraint
Some of the pushback around Cloud Dancer stems from the idea that a pale neutral limits creativity. In reality, working with a restrained base can be a productive creative challenge.
Instead of asking, “How do I make this color exciting?” the more useful question becomes, “What does this color allow other elements to do?”
Cloud Dancer encourages designers to think more deliberately about contrast versus harmony, saturation levels, texture, and surface interest. It shifts the focus toward how color functions in relationship, not in isolation.
For indie dyers, it also presents an opportunity to explore nuance. Near neutral shades are often more difficult to dye consistently than saturated colors, requiring careful control and intentional formulation. In that sense, Cloud Dancer is not a shortcut. It is a precision exercise.
Using Digital Tools and AI as Creative Assistants
Digital palette generators and AI tools can help bridge the gap between theory and making. By starting with Cloud Dancer as an anchor color and generating complementary or analogous palettes digitally, designers can explore combinations quickly before committing to dye vats, fabric orders, or stitch plans.
Used thoughtfully, these tools act as sketchbooks rather than decision makers. They allow makers to test ideas, refine palettes, and approach Cloud Dancer with curiosity instead of resistance.
Create gradients with colors that are already popular stock colors in your line of work using digital palette generators to help fill in the gaps like Coolors.co.
An Invitation to Reframe the Conversation
Instead of thinking of Pantone’s Color of the Year as a mandate, think of it as a prompt.
Cloud Dancer does not ask to dominate a design. It asks to support it. When used as structure, backdrop, or negative space, it can elevate color stories, enhance craftsmanship, and invite experimentation across knitting, quilting, embroidery, weaving, and dye work.
Seen this way, Cloud Dancer can be an opportunity to slow down, look closer, and design with intention.
Alanna Wilcox
contributor
Alanna Wilcox is a fiber and AI artist with 16 years of teaching experience, a master’s in art education, and expertise in color matching and dye formulas. As a master spinner, author, and entrepreneur, she empowers fellow fiber artists to enhance their businesses through innovative AI applications, ensuring they thrive while staying true to their craft.
