Last Updated on January 2, 2022
If any organization is an expert on color, it’s the Pantone Color Institute. And they just released 2017’s color of the year.
If you consider the name of 2017’s official “color of the year” and then consider our current political situation, you might think there’s a subtle joke being played.
Pantone chose “Greenery” as its color of the year, calling it “symbolic of new beginnings.”
PANTONE 15-0343 #Greenery is the PANTONE #ColoroftheYear selection for 2017 💚🌱 #Greenery symbolizes reconnection we seek with nature & all. pic.twitter.com/DwRyZ80cg1
— PANTONE (@pantone) December 8, 2016
The shade is a “fresh and zesty” yellow-green.
“This is the color of hopefulness, and of our connection to nature,” Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, explains. “It speaks to what we call the ‘re’ words: regenerate, refresh, revitalize, renew. Every spring we enter a new cycle and new shoots come from the ground. It is something life affirming to look forward to.”
The ironic part of the Pantone color choice is that it’s any shade of “green,” given that the biggest “new beginning” story of the year will be a new president whose recent selection for new Environmental Protection Agency head is someone who, by all indications, is not exactly someone who is a friend of the environmental agenda. Scott Pruitt, attorney general of Oklahoma, will head the agency, a move The Washington Post describes as the signal of “an assault on President Obama’s climate change and environmental legacy.”
The Economist reports Pruitt has close ties to coal and gas companies and related lobbyists and is “a climate change obfuscator, and perhaps an outright denier.”
From an environmental policy, some may question whether 2017 is the right year for “greenery,” or whether the “new beginning” it represents might be the “beginning of the end” of good news for all things green.
It has been four years, incidentally, since a shade of green was selected as a Pantone color of the year. In 2013, “Emerald” received the honor.
My favorite color is green – almost ALL shades – so I’m tickled the color of the year is a green. I like “greenery” though I’m not sure it would fit into my decor. I tend to use blue-greens, not yellow-greens when I decorate.
I’m told cooler colors like the blue-greens will actually make a room appear bigger than it actually is. I might experiment with that at some point. All of my walls are a cream-colored off-white. :/
I’ve never heard that but it is entirely possible. Regardless, it is nice to add more color to rooms.