The regions bound by sequence-specific transcription factors can be highly 
variable across different cell types despite the static nature of the underlying 
genome sequence. This has been partly attributed to changes in chromatin 
accessibility, but a systematic picture has been hindered by the lack of 
large-scale data sets. Here, we use 456 binding experiments for 119 regulators 
and 84 chromatin maps generated by the ENCODE in six human cell types, and 
relate those to a global map of regulatory motif instances for these factors. We 
find specific and robust chromatin state preferences for each regulator beyond 
the previously reported open-chromatin association, suggesting a much richer 
chromatin landscape beyond simple accessibility. The preferentially bound 
chromatin states of regulators were enriched for sequence motifs of regulators 
relative to all states, suggesting that these preferences are at least partly 
encoded by the genomic sequence. Relative to all regions bound by a regulator, 
however, regulatory motifs were surprisingly depleted in the regulator's 
preferentially bound states, suggesting additional non-sequence-specific binding 
beyond the level predicted by the regulatory motifs. Such permissive binding was 
largely restricted to open-chromatin regions showing histone modification marks 
characteristic of active enhancer and promoter regions, whereas open-chromatin 
regions lacking such marks did not show permissive binding. Lastly, the vast 
majority of cobinding of regulator pairs is predicted by the chromatin state 
preferences of individual regulators. Overall, our results suggest a joint role 
of sequence motifs and specific chromatin states beyond mere accessibility in 
mediating regulator binding dynamics across different cell types.