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Health & Fitness

Tangerine Tango Anyone?

Tangerine Tango is Color of the Year. Find out why.

And the Color of The Year award goes to....Tangerine Tango!  

It might not have received a Golden Globe, but this lovely shade of reddish orange did receive  the highest honor from Pantone, the world renowned authority on color, who deemed 'Tangerine Tango' ( Pantone color 18-2120) 'Color of the Year'. “Sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy. Tangerine Tango continues to provide the energy boost we need to recharge and move forward."

Several years back when it was still a struggling color with no respect, I designed this  Manhattan home office/guestroom ( see photo) utilizing a tangy shade of orange from Benjamin Moore Paints called Firenze.   What a great color-warm but not too fiery. Calming- not cloying. NJ.Com recently ran a piece featuring this room titled, "Interior Design: It's Never Too Late For Home Improvement Resolutions" with 12 months worth of ideas that can help make home happier this year- Laura Mannes Design's  being resolutions #1 and #2.

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1. Let nature guide you: "Tangerine Tango" is the official color of 2012, but if you’ve no taste for citrus hues, Westfield interior designer and blogger Laura Mannes has a color-selecting suggestion: "Take your camera, and head outside into nature where the best color combinations exist in abundance and light."

Take this gorgeous orchid called the Monk's Orchid because of it's varying shades of orange, like the  fiery  shades of the Southeast Asian monks' saffron robes which are died in spice colors.

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Colors have a proven physical affect on human beings. Orange, for example, is believed to stimulate activity, appetite and socialization. Colors are also iconic symbols. In China and Japan, orange is used to symbolize happiness and love. American Indians associate the color orange with kinship. And in a post 9/11 United States, orange is the color that means "high" in the color-coded threat system established by presidential order in March 2002.

One thing's for sure. Orange is definitely a color guaranteed to grab your attention-whether you like it, or not. And, though it might take two to Tango, everyone seems to be embracing this award winning color lately.  What's your feeling about orange and it's different hues?  Have you ever infused  it into your home's interior or exterior landscape?

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