Orange.

Love it or hate it, fiery orange is one of the hottest colors for the coming year. So shield your eyes and get ready for flaming orange dishware, furniture, overcoats, dresses, shoes, handbags and even eyeliner.

Sephora is about to bring out a limited-edition spring cosmetics line with orange eye makeup -- including orange false eyelashes made from feathers. The renaissance of orange extends to many facets of design: The Canyons Resort in Park City, Utah, recently installed a luxury ski lift called the Bubble Express -- with heated chairs in eye-popping orange.

Linda Warren, chief marketing officer for Talisker Mountain Inc., which owns Canyons, says the color was chosen in part because it has 'happy connotations.'

Pantone, the color-expert unit of X-Rite Inc., has seen such an uptick in requests for orange color swatches that it is set to declare the hue as Pantone's Color of the Year 2012 on Thursday. (Last year's Color of the Year was a shade of pink called Honeysuckle.)

The specific color Pantone has chosen is called 'tangerine tango' -- a brilliant shade of reddish orange that evokes a fireball as much as fruit.

It was added to Pantone's index of 2,100 colors after the company asked retailers and designers what colors they were seeking out. A plethora of orange requests came back. That led to the Sephora line, which is a partnership dubbed 'Sephora + Pantone Universe.'

Orange offers ancillary advantages to manufacturers and retailers. It makes products stand out on cluttered store shelves. 'If you've got a bunch of products on a shelf, it can't hurt to have an orange one,' says Leatrice Eiseman, a color expert who works with Pantone.

Paint and chemicalmanufacturer Akzo Nobel NV chose a juicy red called 'terra cotta rose' as its 'Color of the Year' at a gathering in September. The company says it's a 'powerful mood modifier, reflecting passion, power and festivity.' Akzo Nobel's color experts say the shade reflects that the world is 'progressing into something more confident and robust' as we head into 2012.

Cheery. Festive. These colorists are focusing on orange -- and similarly bright colors such as pink and chartreuse -- for qualities seen as antidotes to economic woes and a general climate of worry.

This renaissance for orange has been a long time coming. The color was popular in the 1920s, and again in the 1960s, with a lesserrenaissance in the '80s.

Those eras belie the argument made by Pantone and others that orange is a color for cheering up people during down economies. In fact, those were heady economic periods later followed by devastating crashes.

But just a few years ago, orange was 'at the bottom of the totem pole,' says Ms. Eiseman. It began to ascend in popularity just in the past year or two, after appearing on the spring runways of influential designers like Marc Jacobs and Jil Sander's Raf Simons in September 2010.

Orange is also a popular color in Asia -- a major target market for global manufacturers. Many Buddhist monks wear orange robes, notes Danish consumer marketing analyst Martin Lindstrom, adding, 'I think we're going to see a big increase in colors that are popular in Asia.'

Orange does carry certain risks. Not only is it loud, but it could become the avocado of 2012 -- popular for a moment, but considered hideous for years after. Remember all the avocado-green appliances of the 1970s? They're so redolent of that era that they spent years serving as comic relief in period TV shows.

Susan Stone, owner of the Savannah boutique in Santa Monica, Calif., says she bought orange accents gingerly for fall and next spring. She has sold a Celine shopper bag in bright orange, for roughly $2,000. And she just received an order of orange Stella McCartney knitted sweaters. But a jacket would be 'too much of a statement,' she says.

'Our thing is to provide quality fashions that will last a long time,' she notes. 'Orange might not be around' for long.

Interest in orange waxes and wanes more dramatically than for more soothing blues and greens. The color sneaked into Fall 2011 fashion collections, and the trickle turned to a downpour for Spring 2012. Tommy Hilfiger, Jill Stuart, and Nanette Lepore used orange in their collections -- often creating entire orange outfits.

Ms. Lepore was so set on getting a brilliant orange that she changed fabrics to a high-grade polyester because the

textile would absorb more orange dye.

'There were a lot of cottons that got thrown out because they couldn't get the saturation of the dye,' she says.

Leslee Shupe, owner of the Serenella boutique in Boston, says she went whole hog for orange for fall and spring with a store full of looks from Thakoon, Rochas, Bottega Veneta, Tomas Maier and Sophie Theallet. 'Orange can be very flattering,' she says. 'It's a warm color.'

Ms. Shupe also bought bright Hawaiian prints from Joseph Altuzarra and No. 21. 'I think it's good for business,' she says.