Orange Color Stories
From ancient India, where the earliest Buddhist monks dyed their robes with turmeric, to seventeenth-century Holland, where the color became the emblem of the Royal House of Orange, orange has carried both spiritual and political weight.
Modern chemistry widened orange's range into brighter and bolder territory. Today's oranges range from soft apricot and peach, electric and citrus brights to the deep tones of pumpkin and rust.
Here are the stories about some of those Oranges in our Collections.
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/ ANCIENT CORAL / warm, soft, fully saturated pinkish-orange.
Coral has been carved into jewelry and ornament since antiquity, prized by ancient Mediterranean cultures including the Romans, who traded Mediterranean red coral across the empire and believed it offered protection, particularly for children.
This warm coral tone became a defining color of 1970s interiors, turning up widely in upholstery, wall paint, and ceramics throughout the decade. In the 1980s, designer Leonard Horowitz created the “Miami Color Palette,” a set of forty pastel colors including coral, and used it to repaint Miami Beach's Art Deco buildings, most of which had originally been plain white, drawing his inspiration from the city's sunsets, ocean, and sand.
/ APRICOT CREAM / soft, pale, peachy-orange with a gentle, milky cast.
Peachy, apricot-toned bridesmaid dresses became a defining look of the mid-1970s, typically styled as tiered, ruffled gowns paired with matching wide-brimmed hats. The color held on through the 1980s, when peach also became the standard shade for bridesmaid nosegay bouquets, part of a decade defined by puffy sleeves and taffeta following Princess Diana's 1981 wedding party.
Matching bridesmaid dresses have a much older, stranger origin than modern soft pastels suggest: in medieval Europe, the wedding party dressed identically to the bride and groom so evil spirits couldn't identify who was actually getting married. Queen Victoria reshaped the tradition in 1840, designing all twelve of her own bridesmaids' dresses in white silk and tulle with white roses, a choice credited with popularizing the coordinated, dress-alike bridal party still expected today.
/ BRICK ORANGE / reddish with an earthy warmth.
Fired clay brick has been a building material since at least 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia, its warm orange-red color coming directly from iron oxide in the clay, oxidizing to this hue during the firing process.
Exposed brick became the defining feature of SoHo's converted lofts in New York, former 19th-century manufacturing and warehouse buildings that artists began moving into starting in the 1960s and '70s. That same warm brick-red has remained a defining feature of industrial-loft interior design ever since, prized for the warmth and texture it brings to otherwise minimalist spaces.
/ DUTCH ORANGE / deep, burnt rust-orange, dense and earthy.
This deep, burnt-orange tone traces back to a natural mineral pigment prized by Dutch Golden Age painters in the 17th century, mined for its rich orange-red hue and ground for use in oil paint.
The tone survives today as a named historic paint color, inspired by mid-20th-century English decorator John Fowler's schemes and the broader English country-house tradition of reviving Georgian-era color. Modern designers working in period homes still reach for it as a warm, grounding wall color, often layered with dark wood furniture and antique pottery to evoke that same historic English-country warmth.
/ HIGH-VIS ORANGE / extremely bright and intensely artificial.
Pigments capable of this level of brightness were only developed in the mid-20th century, and international safety standards adopted this intense orange for road crews, life vests, and emergency signage because it registers more distinctly against natural backgrounds than any other color in the visible spectrum.
Beyond its safety origins, high-vis orange has been deliberately borrowed by streetwear and utility-inspired fashion designers as a bold, attention-grabbing accent color, turning a purely functional hue into a style statement.
/ HONEY TOFFEE / warm, rich and sweet golden-brown orange.
Toffee is made by heating sugar and butter until it caramelizes, its color deepening the longer the sugar is cooked before it sets.
Honey Toffee is used as a warm grounding tone in patchwork and applique projects, and that same rich caramel-toffee tone has become a familiar shade in leather goods and furniture upholstery, valued for a warmth that pairs easily with both traditional and modern interiors.
That tone became a signature material choice for Ralph Lauren Home, whose leather Chesterfield sofas and club chairs have defined the brand's classic American aesthetic since the 1980s, paired with mahogany, brass, and equestrian-inspired accessories, and it remains a recurring choice in traditional interior design today, valued for developing a deeper patina with age and use.
/ MARIGOLD YELLOW / festive golden-orange giving warmth and vitality.
Across cultures, this radiant shade has long been connected with celebration, devotion, and renewal. In India, marigold flowers have carried sacred meaning for centuries, woven into garlands and offered to deities including Lakshmi during Diwali. In Mexico, marigolds have been central to Día de los Muertos traditions for generations, where their bright blooms honor and remember loved ones.
Marigold Yellow also appears throughout craft traditions, including kantha quilting, the centuries-old Bengali practice of hand-stitching layers of vintage sari fabric into richly colored bedspreads and throws.
A color of ceremony, craftsmanship, and joy, Marigold Yellow brings warmth and celebration to any space.
/ SUNSET ORANGE / vivid coral with the warmth of a fading sun.
In 1815, the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia threw enough volcanic ash into the atmosphere to trigger the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816, producing unusually vivid, richly colored sunsets across Europe. English painter J.M.W. Turner witnessed these skies and became fascinated with sunset light, returning to fiery orange and red skies throughout his career, from Sunrise with Sea Monsters to Norham Castle, Sunrise.
That same warm, atmospheric orange remains a favorite in tropical and coastal design today, appearing in hand-dyed textiles, ceramics, and sun-washed interiors that draw on the mood of a fading summer evening.
/ TAMARIND / reddish-brown orange with a dense, tangy richness.
Native to tropical Africa, tamarind spread across South Asia, the Middle East, and eventually the Americas along historic trade routes, its sour-sweet pulp becoming a foundational souring agent in cuisines from India and Thailand to Mexico.
This grounded shade has a strong connection to craft and material traditions. Tamarind seeds and their tannin-rich coats have long been used in South and Southeast Asian textile-making as natural dyes and mordants, creating warm brown tones on silk and cotton.
Today, Tamarind has found a place in contemporary interiors as a moody, grounding wall color, bringing warmth and sophistication when paired with natural wood, aged metals, and handcrafted materials.
/ PUEBLO ORANGE / warm, sun-baked, earthy terracotta tone.
The color echoes the adobe architecture of the American Southwest, a building tradition of sun-dried mud brick that Ancestral Puebloan communities developed over a thousand years ago and that Spanish colonists later adapted into the mission-style buildings still found across New Mexico and Arizona.
Santa Fe-style interior design continues to lean heavily on this warm, sun-baked orange, pairing it with turquoise accents and dark wood viga beams to evoke the region's adobe architecture indoors.
/ WET CLAY / earthy, muted orange-brown with a soft richness.
Clay has been shaped into pottery by human hands for at least 20,000 years, and the specific orange-brown of wet, unfired clay comes from iron oxide within the mineral itself, a color that darkens further once fired.
This warm, matte tone has become a defining feature of contemporary ceramics and pottery studios, and the broader terracotta revival in interior design over the past decade has kept this earthy, handmade-looking color in constant circulation, prized for looking unfinished and honest.
/ COGNAC AMBER / warm, rich golden deep orange.
Cognac takes both its name and color from the celebrated French brandy, whose amber hue develops slowly as it ages in oak barrels. This tone became a signature leather color in fashion accessories through the 20th century, prized for how the shade deepens and develops character with age and wear, much like the brandy itself.
Balanced between orange and brown, amber carries the warmth of honey, polished wood, autumn leaves, and late afternoon light. It is grounded, cultivated, and quietly rich without demanding attention. A timeless color that only gets richer with time.
/ ORANGE HARLEQUIN / bright, bold, theatrical and playful.
Harlequin takes its name from the iconic character of Italy’s 16th-century commedia dell’arte, known for his distinctive costume made from colorful fabric pieces arranged in a diamond pattern. Over time, the name became associated with lively, expressive design and a spirit of performance.
This vivid orange carries that same sense of movement and celebration. Long connected with carnival, stage costumes, and creative expression, it brings confidence and energy wherever it appears.
In contemporary interiors and fashion, Orange Harlequin adds a fearless burst of personality through statement textiles, upholstery, and accent pieces.
/ APRICOT ORANGE / rich color of the sun-ripened fruit.
Apricots were cultivated in Central Asia and China thousands of years before spreading west along trade routes into Persia and the Mediterranean, prized both fresh and dried as one of the earliest widely traded stone fruits.
Jacqueline Kennedy wore an apricot silk dress and matching coat designed by Oleg Cassini during her 1962 goodwill tour of India, first worn on a boat ride on Lake Pichola in Udaipur. Cassini later said he wanted Jackie “to stand out” on the trip and that “the visual impact of color was important.” The dress became one of the most photographed looks of her India tour, and within months, a replica was selling in the Sears catalog and dressing Barbie dolls in living rooms across America.
/ PALE KOROMIKO ORANGE / gentle, warm, golden cast.
The name koromiko comes from Te Reo Māori, referring to a group of native New Zealand hebe shrubs long used medicinally and practically by Māori communities.
This approach of naming colors after native New Zealand plants, landscapes, and localities became a defining convention of the country's paint and design industry, giving its color palettes a distinct national identity apart from generic international color names.
This gentle, sun-warmed variant has found favor in soft pastel interior and gender-neutral nursery palettes seeking warmth, calm and playfulness combined.
/ ART NOUVEAU PEACH / delicately warm and vivid Pinkish-Orange
The Art Nouveau movement flourished across Europe from the 1890s through the 1910s, its designers, including Alphonse Mucha and Émile Gallé, favoring soft, naturalistic pastels like this peach alongside flowing floral motifs drawn directly from plant and flower forms.
That soft, decorative peach tone remains associated with the movement's ornamental glasswork, posters, and interior detailing, and continues to surface in design revivals that borrow the era's romantic, organic sensibility.