When it comes to home decor, we all have our preferences- classic, minimal, modern, vintage, you name it there is a home in Chicago that has it. You can tell a lot about a seller and their style from how they paint their home. You can also tell a lot about a buyer in how they respond to the color palette in a property as well.  It can be hard to envision your new home when the colors on the walls do not mesh with your personal tastes. It can also be hard when the colors do not compliment the space or are just plain boring. However, now more than ever it is easier to get creative and make the home that you want. With everything from Pinterest, Instragram, and even Facebook, you have limitless ideas to make your home unique and tailor it to you. The most important factor, you can also expand and boldly go outside of the grays and the beige colored walls.

Here is where Pantone comes in. Pantone is a widely renowned authority of color and provider of color systems. Pantone  focuses on color communication and how our world lives in color. Well… what does that even mean? There site outlines the vibrant history of Pantone’s LLC dating back to the 60s.

“In 1963, Lawrence Herbert, Pantone’s founder, created an innovative system for identifying, matching and communicating colors to solve the problems associated with producing accurate color matches in the graphic arts community… Pantone has since expanded its color matching system concept to other color-critical industries, including digital technology, fashion, home, plastics, architecture and contract interiors, and paint.” It’s hard to pick up a magazine and see the generic names of colors to be no where in site. Over the last few years with Marsala, Tangerine, Radiant Orchid, and Emerald, Pantone has defined fashion and home trends. More importantly, it pushes us outside the box and gives us more of a foundation to talk about color and what it ultimately means.

Each year Pantone will release a color as a symbol  to represent our culture and our time. Basically, Pantone’s color of the year is not just a color but a mindset and how we express ourselves. That’s how colors usually tend to work right? Warm colors in your living room to make you feel at home, or maybe more of a neutral vibe is better fitting. Again, we express ourselves and our homes through color to communicate our style. Last year, the color(s) of  2016 were Rose Quartz and Serenity. The pale pink and the calming blue represented a joining of mindfulness and balance. The merriment of these two colors has layers of meaning from moving with societal movements and gender equality, to simply just being colors of relaxation in turbulent times. They are also just really pretty and airy colors.

2017’s color of the year is a complete 360 from the laid back feel of 2016. With a ramped political climate and a collective notion that 2016 was awful, Pantone responded with a color to help us through. The color of 2017 is Greenery. To represent new beginnings, the yellow-green shade is reminiscent of the first days of Spring. Most importantly, it is a color in nature to inspire us to “revive, restore, and renew.” The Executive Director connected this with our yearning for reassurance in this rough political environment and the reconnection to make to nature and to a larger purpose.

While the color in your bedroom might not have a heavy philosophical meaning, you can still can evoke the emotions you would want to feel. The other great part about Pantone’s color of the year is that they create several palettes with color pairings for everyone. The names of these color pairings range from “Rev it Up” to “Ethereal Material” and my personal favorite “Moody Blooms.” Pantone has set up a way for everyone to incorporate Greenery into their life by their color preferences. So whether you want to take a color risk in your home, a piece of clothing, or just a cute mug from their website, embrace color of the year and embody what colors mean to you.