Most of us are probably familiar with the seasonal announcements from fashion houses and interior decorators that brown is the new black; or black is this year's pink - but on learning this trivial titbit, we probably don't rush out to change our entire wardrobe or redecorate the lounge in hues of cream and magenta. It's good, however, to keep a close eye on what's hot and what's not in the world of colour. And if you need to work with colour in any of your Microsoft Word 2007 documents, it's reassuring to know how to get it right.

Pantone - the doyens of all things colourful - has selected honeysuckle, a hot pink shade, as their colour of the year for 2011. Describing the colour as "a vibrant, energetic hue," Pantone says that, unlike last year's choice of turquoise, which represented an escape, "honeysuckle emboldens us to face everyday troubles with verve and vigour". Last year's winning turquoise hue was seen everywhere from magazine covers to cushion covers. Will honeysuckle rise to its promise of captivating, stimulating and getting the adrenaline going? The colour will now appear in a location near you across a diverse range of goods from wedding dresses, credit cards, and paint, to food packaging.

If you are keen to keep up with the latest colour trends, but just aren't sure what is going to clash and what will complement, Microsoft Office Word 2007 makes it easy to use styles without having to worry. When you use styles to format your document, the style definitions interact with Quick Style sets and Theme settings to provide colour combinations of cohesive, professional-looking designs.

And after you apply styles, you can quickly change the look of the document to suit your needs by choosing the Quick Style set that you like. You can refine the look of the document even more by selecting a Theme that fits with your document, too. Within the Quick Style and Theme parameters, you can also fine tune adjustments to the colour and font schemes. Quick Style sets, Themes, and colour and font schemes provide some powerful tools for document design; the key is in understanding how they fit together.

Previous versions of Word included a set of built-in styles that were designed to look good together. But it was only one set. If you wanted headings to be cantered in some documents but aligned on the left margin in others, you either used separate templates or you created separate styles for each kind of formatting.

In Word 2007, you can use the same document template and the same styles for different kinds of documents. For a document with centred headings, you can use the Formal Quick Style set; and for a document with left-aligned headings, you can use a different Quick Style set, such as Word 2007. Switching Quick Style sets automatically updates the formatting of all the styles in the document. You can see the effect of a Quick Style set by pointing to the various style sets before you click one. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Change Styles, point to Style Set, and then point to the various style set names.

When you apply a Theme, Word will also allocate a font scheme, a colour scheme, and a set of graphic effects. The font scheme and colour scheme from the Theme are carried over into the Quick Style sets.

For example, if you use the default Theme (Office) for your Word document, the Quick Style sets will apply the font Cambria for your headings and body text, along with the Office colour scheme. If you change to another Theme, such as Metro then again all of the Quick Style sets and document text will change to Consolas for headings, Corbel for body text, and the Metro colour scheme. You do not have to use the Theme throughout your entire document, however. If you prefer the colour scheme and graphical effects of the Civic Theme, but you don't want to use Georgia in your headings and body text, then you can easily apply a different font scheme. To do this, go to the Home tab, in the Styles group, and point to Change Styles and then point to Fonts.

Applying a Theme or a font scheme defines font choices for headings and body text that are designed to go together. The font choices stay in effect regardless of which Quick Style set you choose, until you choose a different Theme or font scheme. If you want to use a particular font for text, regardless of the Theme or font scheme, then you can create a custom style. Or you can use direct formatting by selecting the text and applying the font that you want.

It's also easy to apply a colour scheme that is designed as a coordinated set of colours. When you define the colour of text, you can choose one of the Theme colours, or you can select from a range of standard and custom colours. If you choose a Theme colour, the colour might change if you switch to a different colour scheme or Theme. However, if you choose a standard or custom colour, text is displayed in that colour regardless of the colour scheme or Theme that you apply to the document.

Pointing out the positives of their selected colour for 2011, Pantone says: "Honeysuckle derives its positive qualities from a powerful bond to its mother colour red, the most physical, viscerally alive hue in the spectrum." So, if you want to be sure of creating that like-birds-to-nectar effect, then plump for pink.