Design Isn’t Neutral. It’s White. And Pantone Just Proved It.

On whiteness, erasure, and the design industry’s ongoing refusal to acknowledge the politics of color.

Sometimes I wonder if they do this shit on purpose. And I don’t usually react publicly to industry wide moments because, let’s be honest, half of these decisions are engineered for outrage and clicks. But this one? I can’t ignore it.

Pantone rolled out its Color of the Year…and it is the whitest thing I have ever seen. Literally. Figuratively. Conceptually. And while many people will shrug and say, “It’s just a color,” those of us who understand the ripple effects know better. Color is never just color. It’s narrative. It’s power. It’s hierarchy. And when an institution with Pantone’s influence labels a shade of whiteness as the global direction of design, it reinforces an old, dangerous story: purity belongs to whiteness, desirability belongs to whiteness, neutrality belongs to whiteness.

And we know exactly who that serves.

Interior design is not a white profession. It has simply been treated and whitewashed as one. Yes, most practitioners in this field are white, and that’s why we’ve endured decades of Eurocentric, neutral, beige on beige spaces anointed as “timeless.” But interior design at its core has never been about whiteness. It has always been about culture, heritage, color, texture, and the ways we weave human narrative into space.

Yet the story the industry keeps telling is that whiteness is the default, the safe choice, the aesthetic north star. I remember walking the trade shows and showrooms, aisles of creams, linens, and “soft neutrals.” Magazine covers stacked with white spaces, blonde wood, and desaturated rooms. Those projects, stripped of culture, stripped of story, stripped of any reference to the communities they supposedly serve, kept winning all the awards.

It wasn’t just an aesthetic. It was a message about who design is for.

Design, neighborhoods, and communities are rooted in heritage, narrative, color, and culture. But when whiteness is continually uplifted as the ideal, we erase the very elements that make spaces human. We reinforce the idea, conscious or not, that color is risky, emotional, unrefined, too specific. That whiteness is the standard and everyone else is deviation.

What happens when an industry keeps choosing whiteness as its grounding point?

We pretend culture is optional.

We pretend neutrality is universal.

We pretend erasure is sophistication.

I’ve spent over a decade designing for communities most harmed by these narratives. Black and brown families told explicitly and implicitly that they don’t deserve softness, beauty, or meticulous design because “they’ll tear it up,” or “that’s too much for this demographic.” Those statements, the same ones I’ve documented repeatedly, are descendants of the ideology that crowns white as the ideal.

So no, Pantone choosing another iteration of white isn’t harmless.

It is a reminder of how quickly this industry will slap us in the face to signal that the old patterns and old ways are exactly what they intend to continue.

Not accidental. Not a stumble. A choice.

And then I read Pantone’s statement:

“The color was selected for its emotional and creative resonance, not as a stance on politics, ideology, or race.”

“Pantone does not assign or amplify political narratives to color.”

That level of detachment is egregious. It’s offensive. And it’s exactly why we remain here, in this cycle of aesthetic amnesia, acting as if color exists in a vacuum and whiteness doesn’t carry centuries of cultural weight. To pretend color is apolitical is to ignore the very real impact design choices have on identity, belonging, and who gets culturally centered.

White spaces, continual white spaces, do not function as neutrality. They function as exclusion. They signal, loudly and consistently, that if it is not white, if it is not pure, then it is not for you. That you are not for it. This is not theory. This is lived reality for entire communities who have never seen themselves reflected in the spaces around them.

And what makes it worse is watching manufacturers and product companies profit from the aesthetics of culture. Patterns, textures, narratives pulled from communities of color, while continuing to uphold whiteness as the ideal. They want the story, the heritage, the “inspiration,” the marketability of other cultures while reminding us that whiteness is still the clean slate.

The standard.

The entry point.

The blinding filter everything else must pass through.

You cannot say design is not political while continually upholding the aesthetics that have historically excluded people. You cannot claim neutrality while reinforcing a hierarchy that tells entire communities their stories are too “specific,” too “bold,” too “ethnic,” or too “risky” for mainstream design.

This isn’t about a color.

It’s about a system that keeps choosing erasure over acknowledgment.

And the truth is: we feel it. We see it. We know it. Every time whiteness becomes the direction we’re all expected to follow, it tells us, yet again, that our culture, our heritage, our color, our textures, our narratives are optional. Add ons. Accents. Trends. But never the standard.

I don’t have anything else to say right now.

But I’ve said enough over the years that anyone paying attention should recognize this moment for what it is.

Not an accident.

Not an oversight.

A reminder.

A reminder of who the industry thinks design is for.

And who it still refuses to see.