The Color Marketing Group

Color Marketing Group, founded in 1962, is a not-for-profit, international Association of 1,100 Color Designers involved in the use of color as it applies to the profitable marketing of goods and services.

CMG’s major focus is to identify the direction of color and design trends. CMG members then "translate" that information into salable colors for manufactured products.

CMG's Consumer and Contract Color Directions Forecasts are developed annually through the collaborative efforts of approximately 400 members that attend CMG's Conference.

STEP 1:
This unique method of color forecasting is an ongoing process and begins well before CMG members convene. Conference registrants develop individual forecasts that encapsulate a wide variety of influences or trends that each Color Designer identifies within his or her industry.

STEP 2:
More than 400 CMG members from around the world collaborate during two International Conferences each year to analyze color trends.

STEP 3:
Color Forecast Workshops take place concurrently in which CMG members interpret the direction of color and influences ranging from the economy, the environment, politics, sports, demographics, social issues, technology to cultural events, worldwide.

STEP 4:
Following a day-long discussion of the many influences on colors and the shifts likely to occur in the coming years, a Color Forecast is developed from each of the Workshops.

STEP 5:
Through a Steering Committee, these Workshop Forecasts are consolidated into a final Forecast.

Slate:
How do the CMG members choose their colors? The official line is that they look at economic trends (pastels in bad times, saturated colors in good times) and also examine social trends. What this boils down to is six hundred people sitting around in small groups, trying to figure out the next big thing. Gray, for example, was chosen in part because of the craze for technology and space-age stuff as the millennium approaches: "People associate gray with futuristic things like silvery metallics and anodized aluminum," a CMG spokeswoman said. And why blue? "Water is a big social issue, what with the current emphasis on designer water and water conservation."

The Color Marketing Group forecasts up to three years. In my opinion, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody is obliged to follow CMG's colors, but a manufacturer who ignores them is likely to find that all his competitors’ products are in fashionably colors, while his own clash.
So if most manufacturers are using the CMG colors, it clearly isn't a coincidence your window covering choices match perfectly with your carpet choices.
background article (Dutch)