A TOUCH OF COLOUR
There are trendy hues for every taste, Vicky Sanderson writes.
The design world includes folks who can get awfully agitated when paint companies line up annually to pronounce a singular “colour of the year.” Typically, in my experience, the indignation boils down to the celebrated colour not being the one they themselves thought most deserving of the honour.
Given that a paint colour won’t cure cancer, solve the climate crisis, or bring about world peace, I take a more live-andlet-live approach. After all, one of the great joys of colour is that it’s such a personal taste, and with so many beautiful options, surely everyone should just pick the shades they like the best.
That should be easy next year, as what’s trending in colours for 2020 runs across a spectrum — in both senses of the word.
One the first manufacturers to announce a colour of the year was Beauti-Tone (www. homehardware.ca/beauti-tone). Honey I’m Home Paint is a warm and versatile honeyed brown that plays on creative director Bev Bell’s theory that Canadians are craving calm, and want a hue that’s like “a great big warm hug.”
Wandering by my desk and seeing the rich tone — reminiscent of heavily creamed coffee — the Man of the House stopped to admire it. At the time, I was going gaga over the two dark and dramatic new colours — Oxford Navy and Athenian Black — artist/colour expert Annie Sloan (www.anniesloan.com) has added to her Chalk Paint line.
The blue takes its inspiration from Oxford University’s insignia — an inky tone particularly effective as an accent. It owes a debt, Sloan says, to “the saturated blue synonymous with traditional Indian block printing, elegant nineteenth century military uniforms, and fountain pens.”
Athenian Black pays homage to the true, deep black used to render figures and scenes on the world-famous collection of ancient Grecian painted ceramics Sloan visits at her local museum, The Ashmolean (www. ashmolean.org).
A slightly less moody blue got the nod from Dulux Paints (www. dulux.ca). Chinese Porcelain has the brightness of cobalt, slightly darkened with navy.
It evokes “natural elements such as the sea and sky — creating serenity in space,” says Dulux’s Rob McDonald.
For the first time, Dulux has also announced a 2020 stain colour: Teak is a semitransparent, medium-brown stain the company thinks is a perfect complement to Chinese Porcelain.
Benjamin Moore (www.benjaminmoore.ca) veered away from deeper tones with a palette dominated by soft and sweet yellow, green, blue, and white tints that it calls “fresh, light, optimistic.”
The leader of the pack is the rosy pink First Light, a modern, refreshing choice that I think will work as a neutral or an accent, and which would look lovely on a ceiling. It’s one of 10 colours Benjamin Moore has labelled on trend for 2020 that includes taupe- and blue-tinted greys (Thunder and Oxford Gray), an earthy Cushing Green and the teal Blue Danube.
Valspar, the paint line available at Lowe’s (www.lowes.ca), hedged its bets by naming 12 nature-inspired colours of the year that bring “the tranquillity of nature and the outdoor world into the home.”
British paint manufacturer Farrow & Ball (www.farrow-ball.com) chooses not to jump on the colour of the year bandwagon. Recently, however, they collaborated with the Natural History Museum in London to create a Colour by Nature palette.
The 16 colours are inspired by the natural landscape, and drew on the Museum’s collection of rare books, including Abraham Gottlob Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, which Charles Darwin used on his voyages to document and describe colour. My favourites include a confident Lake Red and the muted, organic Sap Green, which looks well paired with brown and darker greens.
With so many delicious colours on offer, homeowners planning to fit in a paint job before the holidays will be spoiled for choice. Which means it will all come down to the expression of individual taste — one’s own personal trends forecast, as it were. Maybe the paint companies are getting it, after all.