Choosing Your Color of the Year: Powerful Intention Setting

Discover the power of colors and how to choose your personal Color of the Year to set clear, embodied intentions for the year ahead.

Color is a power which directly influences the soul.

Wassily Kandinsky

Setting Intentions with a Color of the Year

A couple of weeks ago, I began sketching out contenders for my words, intentions, and phrases for 2026—my themes for the year.

Each was good, meaningful, honest. But they felt too neat, too narrow. And too cerebral. I wanted something that could hold a lot more energy. Something laden with metaphor and power. Something I could see each day and feel instantly, without needing to think or translate.

So, I stepped out of language and chose to work with color instead.

I wanted a hue that could leap past my rational mind and sink directly into my subconscious, into my soul, where it could quietly guide my choices and the artful, boundless life I am building in the year ahead.

A color can hold emotion, intention, momentum, and possibility all at once. It becomes an atmosphere to inhabit, a frequency to live inside, a visual anchor that keeps calling us toward who we are becoming.

A color is beyond symbolic; it is embodied. And when it becomes our companion for the year, it begins to shift how we move, create, and show up in the world.

Words speak to the mind, but color speaks to the senses. It shapes mood, alters energy, and influences decisions with a kind of magic that language cannot reach.

Ready to discover yours?

Choosing Your Color of the Year

Begin by listening. Sit still for a moment and name the qualities you want to invite into your year. Let each one land, resonate. Which feel rooted in you already, and which feel like an invitation to step more fully into yourself, into more courage?

Then, close your eyes and imagine each desired, bold quality as a color. Sense the hue that holds all the qualities you want to bring into your being. Which color lifts your chest, quickens your pulse, stirs your hands to create? Which feels like the energy you want to carry into every day?

For me, that color is Hot Coral—Pantone 17-1656, to be exact. It radiates joy, warmth, and vitality. It is alive and activating, chic without effort, artful yet simple, celebratory, filled with fire. It’s glowing and festive, unapologetic.

My Color of the Year holds complexity and passion with ease, a spark that sets everything around it in motion.

Embodying Your Color of the Year

Once you know your Color of the Year, let it live with you. Place it where you’ll see it: on your desk, in your journal, in your wardrobe, in your digital spaces. Let it steady your focus, inspire your creativity, and guide your momentum.

Then let it expand. Let it shape how you act, how you express, how you rise. Your Color of the Year becomes a living reflection of the life you are claiming—simplifying decisions, sparking inspiration, and reminding you that each day is an invitation to step fully into yourself.

For the year ahead, find your Hot Coral, your luminous blue, your radiant gold. Let it hold your vision. Let it carry your aliveness.

And each time you see it, let it remind you: this is your year, and you are painting it in full color.