Roll with it
The color industry wants to soothe us with energizing shades in 2024. Local designers give some of them the brush off.
In 1999, Pantone, the company that standardized the way the design industry specifies color, unleashed its first color of the year. According to its website, Pantone aims to “engage the design community and color enthusiasts around the world in a conversation around color.” Paint companies have since joined the fray, also naming annual “it” colors, enlivening the discussion.
In choosing a year’s reigning hue, the experts often draw correlations between color and culture. They may reference recent events, decreeing color as a salve. For instance, Pantone described its 2009 pick, “Mimosa,” as expressing “hope and reassurance in a time of economic uncertainty and political change.” The company described its 2023 color, “Viva Magenta,” as promoting “experimentation and self-expression.”
As we awaited Pantone’s pick for 2024 to be unveiled on Dec. 7 — it’s “Peach Fuzz” — we examined the other color of the year picks. How is the color cabal interpreting our experiences, anticipating our needs, and steering our emotions for the coming year? Let’s find out.
Perhaps responding to the bold self-expression of 2023, many companies graced us with shades meant to soothe, balance, restore, energize, and uplift. Dunn-Edwards’s “Skipping Stones,” according to a press release, is a “serene and steely blue with hints of green and gray that emulates the meditative, yet energizing feeling of the sea.” Furthermore, it “captures a collective yearning to slow down and achieve balance and tranquility.” Wow, count us in.
Sherwin-Williams’s “Upward,” a “breezy and blissful” blue, “invokes the ever-present sense of peace found when slowing down, taking a breath, and allowing the mind to clear,” its press releases reported. Similarly, Sherwin-Williams’s Valspar brand named “Renew Blue,” a “balanced blue with a touch of grayed sea-green” that establishes a “restful and meditative mood.”
How do local interior designers feel about these iterations of New England’s favorite color? Sherwin-Williams’s “Upward” was a dud; the dull blue-gray failed to pull in much response. Several designers noted, however, that Dunn-Edwards’s and Valspar’s blue-greens are fitting for this history-rich coastal region.
Stain manufacturer Minwax delves deeper into the sea with “Bay Blue,” a saturated teal about which local tastemakers show enthusiasm. “It’s similar to my favorite Farrow & Ball paint color, ‘Inchyra Blue,’” Kristine Irving of Koo de Kir Architectural Interiors in Boston said. “We recently painted the walls, millwork, and ceiling of a home library in Cambridge in it.” She also used it on a ceiling in a South End town house and as accent pillows in Marblehead. “I’d use this color for anything,” she said.
Most of our designers gave a thumbs-down to Krylon’s “Bluebird.” The spray paint company’s color of the year materials describe the intense shade as “uplifting,” but others dub it jolting. “It reminds me of a bad beach house,” Cecilia Casagrande of Casagrande Studio in Brookline said.
Thiara Borges Dananberg of Studio Borges in Framingham begged to differ. “As a South American New Englander, I’m thrilled to see bright colors,” she said. “That cornflower blue would be fantastic in a den; bonus points if you lacquer it.”
The New England designers we surveyed are tending toward rich burgundies and browns, best captured here by RustOleum’s “Chocolate Cherry.” The brand’s color of the year verbiage includes “coziness,” “reassurance,” and “authenticity.” Tyler Karu of Tyler Karu Design and Interiors in the Portland, Maine, area is inspired by the color’s versatility in that it pairs easily with other hues and can lean traditional or sleek. “Chocolate works with almost every style of architecture and furniture,” Karu said.
Looking at the collection as a whole, Karen Swanson of New England Design Works in Manchester-by-the-Sea observed that these all feel like colors we’ve seen before but that designers are combining them in ways that feel fresh.
As for the merit of the whole color of the year rigmarole, Jennifer Clapp, interiors principal at Hacin in Boston, said their team uses the collection as a roadmap for avoidance. “By the time colors reach the design industry, they have already cycled through fashion, which is geared towards the younger generation,” Clapp said. “Do I want my clients’ living room sofa to look like a 20-something’s smoky raspberry sweat shirt?” No, she does not.
Laura Keeler Pierce of Keeler & Company, a proponent of color in design in Boston and Seal Harbor, Maine, harkens back to Pantone’s raison d’etre. “Color of the year at the very least gets us talking about something besides white, black, and gray,” Pierce said.