Color Trends 2017

Evoking nature and embracing a simple flexibility that lends itself well to just about anything, the Pantone Color Institute has unveiled greenery as its color of the year for 2017. A neutral yellow-green shade, greenery can be paired with an earthy palette to evoke forests and wild beauty, pastels and soft colors to bring to mind the flowers and fresh growth of early spring, or any number of other schemes. With such flexibility, it’s no surprise it would be the Pantone 2017 Color of the Year - it works wonderfully alongside the other trends emerging for 2017.

Pantone’s Palettes for 2017

If you’re looking for a good starting point for color trends in 2017, you may want to start with one of the ten palettes Pantone shared alongside its announcement of Greenery as the Color of the Year. Each offers a very different take on the theme, but any one of them would make an excellent trendy color scheme for your home, a particular room or a garden area.

Indoor paint color trends

Of course, Pantone isn’t the sole arbiter of what’s fashionable in color this year. In particular, top designers expect a move towards more personal colors for indoor color schemes. Earthy greens and subdued taupes for the traditionalists, pastels and muted colors for the laid-back, aggressive shades of red and green matched to deep blues for the creative and the energetic.

In this, Pantone seems nearly prescient in its choice of color this year - greenery integrates wonderfully with any of the top trends of the year, many of which are easily picked out from one of the ten suggested palettes so you can use the Color of the Year in your home.

Outdoor color trends

With natural landscaping and outdoor designs continuing to rise in popularity heading into 2017, Greenery is the perfect match for color-savvy outdoor design. Match your home and lawn furnishings with the bright blooms of your garden or the earthen tones of a forest backdrop. Greenery is the perfect color to pull together home and nature into a single cohesive whole that will stun the neighbors.

Pay special attention to the Pantone color schemes integrating darker shades, as dark paint for homes is particularly trendy this year, following a similar trend in Europe in recent years. A dark-toned home with greenery trim, framed by bright spring blooms would make a beautiful home. Consider a vibrant green entry door to add color and interest to your home.

Trendy but long-lasting

Of course, not every color scheme needs to be super-trendy. Sometimes, you just want to take a room and make it feel a bit bigger, or really want to set off a favorite piece of furniture or art - in that case, you can have your cake and eat it too, thanks to the relative versatility of this year’s trends. Greenery may not be the exciting new thing a few years from now, but it will still be a respectable neutral color that meshes well with any number of schemes.

Meshing 2017’s trends with your existing home

Ultimately, unless you’re doing a full remodel of your home you’ll need to work with what’s already present - which is another reason the popular trends of recent years are leaning towards flexible colors that will hold up over time and splashes of color that can set off just about anything.

Look at the spaces you’re trying to develop a color scheme for - what colors are fixed and necessary, and which ones can you alter or hide? A little paint can go a very long way, and a little remodeling can go much further. Just take your time, and you’ll find the perfect approach.