GREATNESS OF GREY
Warming up to flexible tones
If you ask a thousand people to name their favourite colour, you might get one that would say grey.
But look at any lifestyle or shelter magazine and you’ll see that grey is hot and seemingly here to stay.
Though white remains the bestselling colour for most categories of home furnishings, grey is catching up.
Not only have homeowners embraced grey for things that are easy to change — such as wall colours or throw pillows — they also have embraced grey for things they expect to be using 10, 20 and even 30 years from now, including kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures.
Grey has even gone global, influencing traditional crafts that most of us assume to be impervious to fashion and trends. For example, carpet weavers in Tibet, Nepal and Northern India are still producing patterns that are hundreds of years old, but now the colours are contrasting shades of grey. These same weavers also produce contemporary designs with a strong grey presence, said Salesh Adhikhary of Globalcraft Rugs, a carpeting wholesaler based in Houston.
As a colour, grey encompasses everything from a soft silver to a stark, dark charcoal. It’s the perfect neutral because it’s compatible with almost every other colour, and it folds easily into every style of decor. Dee Schlotter, colour brand manager for Glidden Paints, succinctly summed it up: “Grey plays well with other colours.”
Though most people think of grey as a 50- 50 mix of equal parts black
and white, most greys are actually a mix of other colours that give it a unique chameleon- like quality. A grey wall paint that appears to be slightly greenish when upholstered furniture with a strong green theme is placed against it will acquire a slightly bluish cast if the furniture is reupholstered in blue tones.
All this has obvious advantages: As London- based interiors blogger Kate Watson- Smyth pointed out, “You don’t have to worry about redecorating every time you change a piece of furniture.”
Scott Bodenner, a Brooklynbased textile designer, explained that when grey is the backdrop, small changes can produce a big effect. “It gives people the ability to change the mood of a space by changing the accent colours of small things like throw pillows and small rugs,” he said. “Switch out a soft, calming blue for bright colours like red, yellow or orange and you add pop and action.”
Watson- Smyth, whose affection for grey is evident in nearly every room in her own London home, offered yet another reason to favour it: “Grey gives life to everything in a room. Grey makes everything look more modern and fresh. Grey makes all your possessions pop out. It gives them presence. A good picture on a grey wall — it’s amazing!”
Grey’s trajectory toward a central position in the home- decorating pantheon began about six or seven years ago as a desire for a “new neutral.” After nearly two decades of nothing but “beige, beige, beige,” said Jackie Jordan, director of colour marketing at Sherwin-Williams, “We were beiged out.”
Grey was first promoted by celebrity interior designers, whose work was widely published in the shelter magazines that focus on upscale interiors. This initial coverage conveyed an important truth long known by colourists like herself, Jordan said. It showed that grey can be inspiring. “They showed that grey is not cold, industrial or boring, that it can be calming and sophisticated,” Jordan said.
And that began to change the thinking of the general public as well as the larger design community.
Grey began to appear in fashion and hospitality settings ( hotels and restaurants) and eventually in the editorial pages of magazines that more closely mirror the preferences and aspirations of the average homeowner. As editorial exposure to grey increased, the more comfortable people became with the idea of incorporating grey into their own houses, Jordan said. At the same time, home- furnishing stores such as Ethan Allen, West Elm and Restoration Hardware began to include grey in their furnishing vignettes, and this showed consumers — in a very hands- on way — how to work with grey, Jordan said.
An indication of grey’s increasing acceptance with the general public is their purchase of grey “investment pieces” like sofas, said Jill Waage, executive editor of Better Homes and Gardens Brand and a keen observer of American interior trends for more than 20 years. Though she still sees a lot of white in kitchens and bathrooms, “Grey is common now,” she said, adding, “When we see grey cabinets, that’s a huge impact on colour. It’s here to stay.” The most common use of grey that Waage has observed is flooring.
Because consumers expect to use “hardscape” items like cabinets and bathroom fixtures for two or three decades, manufacturers do not make the decision to offer grey lightly, said Nancy Yusko, a design manager for kitchen and bathroom fixtures at Kohler. “We would never launch a colour we didn’t feel had staying power because a homeowner puts our product in and expects it to stay for 20- plus years.”
To distinguish a fad that comes and goes within one or two years from a trend that lasts for 10 to 20 years, Yusko said her firm “tracks across multiple industries.”
Yusko also pointed out that, in a bathroom, the colour of the fixture itself can enhance the relaxation that comes with a long soak in the tub or a few minutes under the pounding jets of a multi- shower head shower. Most people assume that the benefits of the “spa experience” come from their contact with water, but when you reduce contrast by replacing standard white fixtures with ones in a softer colour like grey, you will feel calmer whether you are in the tub or not, she said.
Jennifer Gilmer of Gilmer Kitchen & Bath, said many of her clients are interested in a grey kitchen but fearful that it will make a kitchen feel and look dark. They become convinced that it’s a great idea when she shows them examples that combine grey with other colours.