Is the World Becoming Less Colourful?
This article was written by one of our Young Reporters, a scheme that gives 14 to 18-year-old school students a chance to write for a real newspaper. Find out more at the Young Reporter website.
While the answer is a resolute ‘yes’, it is difficult to pinpoint why.
The sky is still blue, the grass is still green, yet everything seems greyer.
So, what’s changed?
Over the past century, there has been a stark contrast in the ‘trending’ colours of before compared to now.
From the golds and silvers of the ‘Roaring 20’s’, to the 50’s youthful pastels, the unforgettable neon of the 80’s, and now, seemingly, the 2020’s being the time of minimalist colours.
In a ‘Medium’ article by Cath Sleeman in 2020, a staggering 7083 photos were taken from the ‘Science Museum Group Collection’, analysing the shape and colour of every-day objects over the years-the main takeaway being that yellows and brown had declined most, and that nowadays objects were becoming squarer and greyer, with grey present in 80% of the photographs.
Much of this was attributed to the rising use in plastic instead of wood.
However, this too was true of the 80’s, where objects were at its most colourful.
Perhaps the palette of the modern-day person is just…different?
Pantone, a brand intrinsically linked with colour, gave their ‘Colour of The Year’ 2026 award to ‘Cloud Dancer’; white.
Pantone’s selection is meant to be indicative of fashion, make up, and décor trends to come, and, according to Pantone themselves, is a "thoughtful consideration and trend analysis.”
To many, the choice not only showed the push of muted tones, but was ‘tone-deaf’.
With a long history of bright colours being associated with race inferiority explored in Purnell Ph.D.’s ‘Psychology Today’ article, she concludes “neutrals became the stamp of social and moral superiority, while too much saturation threatened a slippery slope back to ‘savagery.’”
And due to the present global political climate, along with America’s president holding many racist beliefs, many felt choosing ‘white’ either ignored this or fortified it.
This may be reflective of why the world is shifting towards neutral tones like grey and white.
In colour psychology, neutral, monochrome colours like grey and beige present a sense of control needed in times of uncertainty.
Climate anxiety, economic hardships, and political unrest linger in the social media we consume, it’s not hard to see why it is needed.
In a 2025 Newsweek article containing interviews from multiple experts, neutral tones echo uniformity profitable to companies, where “products are designed for quick turnover, curated to be shared on social media and replaced with the season's latest tones.”
The rise in colour neutrality is emblematic of years of internalised biases, the need for stability, and the want to belong in an erratic world ever-present in social media that aims to profit off of us.
But where there is dark, there is light.
Colour trends, as shown at the start, change throughout the years.
And in the end, that is all it is-a trend.
It is us who choose what trends we pick to emulate or ignore.
We can choose make the world more colourful.
