Why did America collectively decide this summer that it wanted to paints its nails, wear sun dresses and polo shirts, even stream old movies, featuring a queasy shade of yellow that looks like nothing more than a stick of butter on the top shelf of the fridge?
“Butter yellow” isn’t just a real shade, it is emerging as the shade of the off-kilter year of 2026. Search interest in “butter yellow dress” and “butter yellow nails” both hit all-time highs this June—the third consecutive June “butter yellow nails” peaked at a high point. “Butter summer” as a search term more than doubled in a single week.
