rating every 2026 color of the year i could find
weather: 🌦️ bro can you let up?
critters: coots and wigeons enjoying the rain
everybody seems to hate pantone's latest COTY, but most of the other entities declaring a 2026 color aren't doing so hot, either. today i gathered up all the colors of the year i made bitchy internal comments about and made them external instead 🙂 maybe at the end of this we'll have a nice palette for the fresh miseries of the coming haab'.
ordered from highest to lowest rated.
WGSN/coloro: "transformative teal" 🔗
this is closest to the phthalo green that has been declared as COTY 2026 by popular consensus in my very scientific sample of internet comments. transformative teal is suggestive of an ancient ocean or untouched jungle--a place of nature no longer accessible to us except in dreams. you can believe something is actually alive in there. maybe it could help us.
rating: 10/10. could be darker and deeper but i'll take what i can get
cuter name: antique marimo
true name: primordial ooze
IKEA: "rebel pink" 🔗
we're really in a reality where IKEA can describe a pastel pink as "bold and vivacious, playful and expressive" in its ad copy and not even be lying. ten years ago this was one of pantone's colors of the year, and yet it can't help but feel current because where we're at now is so fucking bland. how dare anyone call this "the new neutral?" fuck off.
rating: 9/10. i liked it when it was called "rose quartz" and partnered with a soft blue named "serenity." IKEA's "electric blue" from last year doesn't hit the same spot
cuter name: magic crystal
true name: elder millennial
veranda magazine: "silk road red" 🔗
because the entity that chose this color is a magazine rather than a paint company, "silk road red" is here represented by one of their suggested paint chips, farrow & ball's rectory red. i suppose magazines can afford to be bold in ways that paint companies can't--it's not like they have money riding on your purchase of a landlord-approved neutral.
rating: 8/10. maybe there's hope for us yet
cuter name: sugar beet
true name: dangerous caterpillar
behr: "hidden gem" 🔗
sometimes it's hard to strike "cozy" and "sophisticated" at the time, but i think behr got there. it's almost the color of certain veins of that dark green-black marble in every high-class office building in the 80s.
rating: 7/10. like a cigar lounge that was painted blue at one point decades ago
cuter name: queen of the sea
true name: jordan baker
dulux: "rhythm of blues" 🔗
this company heard we're all looking for a little peace in our adblock bunkers and decided on some classic therapeutic shades of calming, anti-madness blue. (supposedly blue street lights make crime go down.) i can't look at these three and not think of a school spirit week, but at least it's different. the two other blues keep the light blue from looking like another dull neutral.
rating: 7/10. one of the colors in this trio is unnecessary, but good luck figuring out which
cuter name: aeolian hall
true name: pep rally
benjamin moore: "silhouette" 🔗
i can't get too mad at what is basically the color of certain soils. it reminds me of some of the stuff i'd dig through at field school. however, it is annoying that a neutral that dares to be darker could be considered unusual.
and it is further irritating that they display it beside some seriously boring color combos. will you be having the recession beige or the inflation greige, sir? they just don't take advantage of the overwhelming THIS IS DIRT vibe. how about some foliage greens, or rich floral yellows? like in the 70s? just spitballing.
rating: 6/10. slightly oppressive for a neutral, but at least it's different
cuter name: sandy loam
true name: touch grass
valspar: "warm eucalyptus" 🔗
just a "spa" green evoking white sage and tea and all that stuff. the next time some eucalyptus trees burn down in my area, i'm gonna think of this color name.
rating: 5/10. i've OD'd on spa greens over the past decade
cuter name: mud mask
true name: poultry seasoning
glidden: "warm mahogany" 🔗
i might've been more charitable towards this one in years past, if i were doing this kind of post in years past, but there are a lot of brown-spectrum colors on this list.
rating: 4/10. i do not hate it, but that's as good as it's getting
cuter name: chocolate truffle
true name: apathetic horse
graham & brown: "divine damson" 🔗
i really don't like oxblood. maybe it doesn't go with my complexion, or maybe i associate it with beets or old stale church carpet or the literal blood of a freshly-dead cow. however, i will say the way g&b styled this paint with antique indian designs is phenomenal. the jewel tones give this color a much-needed lift.
rating: 3/10. and it's only a 3 for my hated oxblood because i really like the styling. click on it, it's very cool
cuter name: alkanet lip balm
true name: beef liver
dutch boy: "melodious ivory" 🔗
"nostalgic," the ad copy claims. there may be no bigger recession indicator than a return to the faux-tuscan wall hues of twenty years ago. this is literally the shade of a simulated home kitchen on a food network show as washington mutual collapses, or the landscape shot by an embedded journalist's handicam. i guess that's a kind of nostalgia--the way you might think a little fondly of the aramark food you get in prison.
can't you just picture the varnished plywood cabinets? the red appliances from williams-sonoma? the kid and his sister who disappeared from school one day because their house was seized by the bank and the family had to move into grandma's bungalow in palm desert? remember when the neighbor hopped the fence to drop a baggie of mosquitovorous minnows in their slimy green pool?
rating: 3/10. it may not be "nostalgia" if i can only remember the bad stuff
cuter name: banana pudding pie
true name: iraq war
sherwin-williams: "universal khaki" 🔗
"easygoing" but also "essential"--relax. fucking RELAX! you will sit in the beige room, and mssrs. sherwin and williams will tell you it's very possible to set off this neutral with "bold pops of color," and you will look through the universal khaki demos and wonder where the "bold pops of color" actually are.
rating: 2/10. having too strong an opinion on this implies i felt anything about it, but maybe i did feel something. fear? worry? is there anything worth saving?
cuter name: chestnut montblanc
true name: sands of precious irreplaceable time
pantone: "cloud dancer" 🔗
i gather this is supposed to be a soothing respite from the overstimulation of life in the advertisement-industrial complex, but these intentions don't seem to have been received by the people. some alternative names i saw included "padded room," "white supremacy," "pantonedeaf," "straitjacket," and "millennial greige."
but isn't this actually the perfect paint chip for the moment? some demonstrations:
- the seemingly nice shirt that dissolves after three gentle cycles in cold water.
- the used 2019 sonata you have to take because your parked 2012 camry was totaled by a high schooler trying to parallel park in a 2024 f150.
- the default paint swept over black mold by the lowest-bidding contractors hired by a landlord who would chew off your child's fingers if he stood to gain financial reward.
- the color the realtor urges you to put in the kitchen and bathrooms, because if you're not thinking of your home's resale value, blackrock puts you on the kill list.
- the creative sterility of numbed madness. the mental illness you would not have and the antidepressants you would not be taking if you lived in a world with priorities not set by molochian greed-demons.
- the white room torture they still do in grade schools across the country.
- the grayish teeth of the senescent right before they close on your throat.
- the annihilative quality of everythingness. not nothingness, because that would be a shade of black. nothingness might be considered a vacation. no, this is all possible things. the blinding obliteration of meaning when all wavelengths of light combine. the true, secret unity of CHAOS and LAW: an omnipresent, inescapable, irresistible disorder immobilizing itself into the pale cement of order.
rating: 1/10. only because i like some of the suggested palettes--i pity the tropical palette being weighed down by this tedious non-color
cuter name: ice foam
true name: rent seeker