A proper vertex coloring φ of a graph G is said to be odd if for each non-isolated vertex x ∈ V(G) there exists a color c such that |φ−1(c)∩N_G(x)| is odd. A graph is 1-planar if it can be drawn in the plane so that each edge is crossed by at most one other edge. We prove every 1-planar graph admits an odd 21-coloring. This improves a recently obtained bound, 23, due to Cranston, Lafferty and Song.