Pantone announced their top two colors for 2021: Illuminating (13-0647) and Ultimate Gray (17-5104). Illuminating is the color of a bright sunny day, hence the descriptive name of Illuminating. Ultimate Gray is a straight up medium gray that will pair with nearly every color. After coming off of a life-altering year of 2020, Pantone found what we needed: a color pairing that “is aspirational and gives us hope.” Aspiration and hope are two feelings that humans need in order to feel like things are going to get brighter.
We’ve been through a lot in the last 12 months, and these colors are grounding and make me happy. Isn’t that why we choose certain colors in our wardrobes, to make us feel certain things? I think we have a lot to look forward to in 2021:
1. The “end” to the pandemic…sometime soon?
2. Changes to how we embrace different races, genders, and cultures.
3. A more resilient family due to being cooped up together for over a year.
4. Less chaotic national news days.
5. (What would you insert here?)
Let’s talk about the color wheel and how to choose colors for combining your jewelry wardrobe with your clothing wardrobe. In circular fashion it follows the ROY G BIV order we learned in grade school of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo/violet. More colors can fit between these six and will be blended using the colors on each side of the new color. This blending can go on infinitely. Five different color combinations are commonly used when you are trying to blend and/or match.
1. Complementary colors: these colors are the ones opposite on the color wheel. This combination provides maximum contrast. When considering the Pantone color of the year Illuminating, the complementary color (opposite) is indigo/violet, thus purple.
2. Primary colors or secondary colors: the primary colors on the wheel are red, yellow, and blue. For adults, you can safely use two of the three, but when you use all three, you begin to look childish. Secondary colors are orange, green, and indigo/violet. These colors are made by mixing combinations of primary colors. Using Illuminating, a very saturated yellow, it is safe to wear it with another saturated red or blue.
3. Analogous colors: these colors are multiple colors within one color family. Take Illuminating for example, you could mix it with other yellow colors like a greenish Yellow or an orangy Yellow.
4. Warm versus cool colors: warm temperature colors are red, orange, and yellow, whereas cool colors are green, blue, indigo, and violet. You can coordinate the cool colors or coordinate the warm colors. Temperature matters. But what also matters is knowing that you can mix a cool color with a warm color and change something that was once cool and make it warm. For example if you mix a red with a purple you end up with a warm reddish Purple hue but when you mix a blue with a purple, you end up with a cool bluish Purple hue. For our Illuminating example you can pair red and orange with the warm yellow. You could also mix in a green if there is sufficient yellow in it.
5. Earthly tones or neutral colors: these are your blacks, whites, grays, browns, and your denim blue. These colors go with any color typically. This is where Ultimate Gray, the other Pantone’s color of the year, comes into play as it is a neutral color and blends well with any color, even the Illuminating yellow color.
Now picture your wardrobe and figure out what you would wear these items of jewelry with.
References
Announcing the Pantone Color of the Year 2021; https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2021; found on March 30, 2021.