Bored of Your Regular Old Walking Route? Here’s How to Take a TikTok “Color Walk”

It’s easy to fall into the same old, same old walking route where you know every sidewalk crack and have a mental map of your favorite facades. It also becomes easy to skip your daily walk when it feels less than inspiring. You need something to shake it up… but without necessarily heading to a totally new destination.

Enter the TikTok color walk. This colorful, active trend first took off last year and is making the rounds again, right as the weather warms up (and as folks resume those #hotgirlwalks). 

Here’s how you do it: You pick a color as a starting point, then follow the color around like a trail of breadcrumbs. You spot the color, walk toward it, then look again. Repeat, repeat, and repeat again. Before you know it, you’re clocking 10,000 steps and a coordinated camera roll. 

A color walk should take you down blocks you’ve never explored and alleys you’ve never noticed. It’s designed to make you see your neighborhood with fresh eyes and get you actually looking at your surroundings, rather than moving through them with your eyes on your phone. 

I did two color walks over two days, one with a hyper-specific vibrant violet that was more difficult to find than I anticipated. The other was with a rich cobalt blue, which I found at every turn on a quick 15-minute walk — so much so that I ended up going in a three-block circle, ending up right back on my block. 

If you pick a color in nature, flowers are easy. Where it gets difficult is when you’re trying to get a more varied collection of color examples, which felt like the right way to go about it, finding everything from a bicycle to a door to a yard sign to a storefront. My advice is to pick an easy color (like red or blue) for your first color walk journey so you get the hang of it. Then work your way up to those niche colors, like chartreuse green or limoncello yellow.

I’m someone who walks a lot around my neighborhood — and takes a lot of photos on any given day. On one hand, I liked that the color walk made me pay more attention to details I might otherwise miss, for example, the colors on the auto repair shop or a particularly neon scooter wheel. But, on the other hand, it felt a bit restrictive, like I was too honed into having eagle eyes looking for a specific color, rather than just enjoying the breezy, warm summer day and appreciating the architecture and details of each house and building, like I normally do.

But, if you’re someone who has trouble stopping to smell the roses, the color walk will make you slow down and notice your surroundings.

This piece is part of Color Month, where we’re showing you the best ways to inject more color into your home and life. From paint color combos to vibrant house tours, head over here to see it all.