The world doesn’t need more grey. What consumer products need is a jolt, a shot of energy and boldness, all of which comes from Tangerine Tango, the reddish-orange hue that Pantone announced as its top colour for 2012.

“There’s the element of encouragement with orange, it’s building on the ideas of courage and action, that we want to move on to better things,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, the research division of Pantone Inc., which creates colour standards for the fashion, beauty and home industries.

The annual forecast for the next year’s dominant colour takes into consideration both what Pantone thinks shoppers want and need. Those are influenced by the designer runways, fabric shows, news events, pop culture and consumer habits. “Part of what we do is look at the zeitgeist,” Eiseman explained. “We have to look at everything in the world around us. It’s not an arbitrary choice.”

For his spring collection, Tommy Hilfiger used the tangerine colour coupled with red, although it also complements navy and brown. He imagines men wearing the orange in a striped or paisley tie, or for women, as a colour for a purse or even a trenchcoat. It’s a colour that will move seamlessly through the seasons.

Look for tangerine with red in the current resort collections for luxury accessory brand Judith Leiber, and it will continue as a top colour for spring, used in a stripe pattern with cobalt blue, fuchsia, gold and white dubbed Palm Beach.

At the mall-level chain Charming Charlie, which organizes displays by colour, tropical orange and hot pink will come together in February for the launch of a theme called Hotel Tropicana. Tangerine is the kind of colour that can change your mood in a minute, said general merchandise manager Kasia Romo, and retailers like that.