Let’s welcome the new year with a salute to green. What seemed like a few special green velvet sofas spotted earlier this year turns out to be part of a spin of the color wheel that lands on green. Pantone Color Institute has named Greenery the color of the year for 2017.
Every year since 2000, the company has chosen a color that reflects the current cultural climate. In the following year, the color has historically influenced trends in all facets of design—architecture, interior décor, fashion, food, travel—the list goes on.
It’s a revitalizing shade of green, sometimes edging toward the green of green olives. Other times, a bit more new spring green.
Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, calls Greenery reassuring “amid a tumultuous social and political environment.” Plus it reconnects with nature.
Eiseman doesn’t just pick the color of the year out of the air. I know. A couple of years ago, I was sitting next to her in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, where we both had attended the Maison et Objet design show. I was pulling a red Salone del Mobile carry-on from the Milan Furniture show — like hers. We talked about color. Eiseman looks at influences in design, fashion, furniture, pop culture and film from Milan and Paris to High Point and the West Coast.
So green is a growing trend. Nature and indoor plants is one of the green stories to be told in 2017. It shows up in housewares, terrariums, botanical wallpaper, green upholstery and fresh green furniture. While winter may be shrouding us in the cold cloak of dark nights, the days are getting longer, and spring will emerge in a show of green.
Along with the unveiling of the color of the year, Pantone created a selection of 10 palettes pairing that color with neutrals, pastels, brights, deeper tones, metallics, and even the two 2016 colors of the year, Rose Quartz and Serenity.
Ultimately, that color calls to mind the ‘re-’ words: refresh, revive, restore, renew, replenish, regenerate, rejuvenate, reinvigorate, re-oxygenate. Design is an outlet for all of these fresh beginnings.
