Orange Regains Its Zest

It’s official. The powers that be in home and fashion design have ordained orange the color of the season. But why is orange, reviled for so long, all of a sudden cool again?

One reason may be that orange is actually not cool at all. It’s one of the warmest color in the spectrum.

“Warm colors are inviting. They remind us of our primordial attachment to fire,” says Pat Verlodt, president of Color Services and Associates, a Huntley, Ill., consumer products consulting firm.

Orange home accessories may be on the rise because they make good companions to the yellow- and lime-colored home accessories that have been popular for the last few seasons. Also, painting a room terra cotta, the darker side of orange, is a way to make it homey.

But when orange shows up in plastic, the warm fuzzy theory does not hold true. Plastic by nature has a cold feel, Verlodt says.

Orange is popular for personal technology items like pagers, cell phones and computers--many of which are made out of plastic--because it is sporty and new. It is OK to buy these items in fun colors because they do not have to match a suit or a sofa.

Another reason orange may be in fashion is simply because we have not seen it for a while. The last time it was really “in” was in the 1960s.

Verlodt says, “It’s a knee-jerk trend because, let’s face it, there are no new colors out there.”