Ultimate Grey and Illuminating: Pantone's 2021 colours of the year spark hope and despair

After the rigours of 2020, trend forecasters have hedged their bets by picking two shades for Colour of the Year

In 2020 Pantone's colour of the year choice, Classic Blue, proved eerily prescient. Announced weeks before the first Covid-19 cluster was discovered, it is a shade used for medical scrubs around the globe.

Perhaps knowing that lightning is unlikely to strike twice, for 2021 the US-paint brand's team of trend forecasters have selected two shades - Ultimate Grey and Illuminating - the second time they have done so in the Colour of the Year's two decade history.