The Color(s) of the Year 2016
For 2016, be prepared to soften up the world and see it through light, calm pastels.
Pantone, for the first time, has chosen two colors to be the Color of the Year: Rose Quartz and Serenity.
Rose Quartz could be described as a stunning, traditionally feminine soft pink color with a hint of melon and dusty rose. Serenity reminds me of a mixture between lavender and a light cerulean blue.
These colors represent balance, calmness, and compassion. Combining both a warmer, soft color—Rose Quartz—with a cooler, icy color—Serenity—leads to not only a peaceful affect on the eye, but with attitude as well.
2015 was without a doubt a year of chaos. Hopefully, with Pantone selecting this beautiful, composed combination, 2016 will be influenced to be peaceful. According to Pantone, the colors are meant to help consumers become more comfortable with using color for expression and become less concerned with judgement when it comes to color usage. In other words, pink isn’t a “girl color” anymore.
As a pastel lover, I couldn’t be more thrilled with Pantone’s selection for this year. The colors are going to pair beautifully with light toned neutrals such as camel, white, cream, almond, taupe, and gray. The colors, even though they are both so light, are also going to work extremely well with faded earthy tones (marsala, navy blue, honey, deep red, and olive green) because of the contrast and underlying warm and cool tones. I would also recommend pairing these colors with any other traditional pastel color—like yellow and purple.
For me personally, I don’t like these colors with black.
I know, I know. Black goes with everything. I just don’t like the contrast between such a soft color and a dark color. It can be done correctly, but for me personally, I would stick to pairing it with the colors I mentioned earlier.
One of my favorite parts about having these light colors as the Color of the Year is that it opens up the timeline to colors. Traditionally, pastels are spring colors. Now, the freshness of spring will be experienced year-round.
Wearing the Color(s) of the Year throughout 2016 is going to be exciting, but may turn out to be challenging for those who don’t particularly wear soft colors.
I predict that the colors will be worn most in accessory items, like purses, shoes, jewelry, and scarves, more so than in traditional clothing items like tops and pants.
For me personally, I favor wearing more warm tones like Rose Quartz over cooler tones like Serenity, which is why I plan on getting a pair of Rose Quartz pumps. I love the pop of color in an outfit to be the shoes, especially since I’m gearing my clothing style to be more neutral. I lucked out a few months ago and bought a Michael Kors purse that has a dusty rose color on it, which is fairly close to the Pantone’s Rose Quartz.
For jewelry though, I will definitely be picking up some earrings and bracelets with a beautiful Serenity-colored stones to add that little splash of color.
If you are someone who is eyeing these colors and wanting to add them to your makeup collection, you can. Pantone actually released a collection with Sephora, which you can find here, that has not only Serenity and Rose Quartz lipstick colors, but an eyeshadow palette and six-shade lipgloss set as well.
(P.S. the color Fox Glove in the lipgloss set is to die for! So perfect!)
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