2007 Color Forecast: Cooling off
By Kara Cox -- Home Accents Today, 4/1/2006
While the spa colors of 2006 brought an air of pampering to the color palette with sterile white, subtle greens and airy blues, this year the colors tilt ever so slightly to a brighter palette incorporating more earth tones with silvery tints of gray or rose.
"The middle of this decade has been dominated by a lot of blues, greens and blue-green," said Chow, of the Color Association of the U.S. "That's going to continue but we're going to see these dreamy colors cooling down with glass green and silver-tinted greens."
Emporio Armani layers cool blues for a tonal effect.
Lamb, of the Trend Curve, agrees there is a cooling trend. "Cool greens are cycling back," she said. "The market has lavished attention on the yellow greens but the edginess has pulled off for 2007. Greens are centered and even some are blue cast. "We also think the very dark greens will have blue overtones as well, something like hunter with a blue cast. We like olive with a little blue and we think for next year we're going to see the three types of greens together."
Lamb also sees gray as an important direction for 2007 in shades like greige, a gray beige, that will serve as a bridge between browns and grays although she wonders if gray will sell as well as the browns that people are accustomed to.
"Mint is the freshest green, peppermint, spearmint," said Stein of The Color Council. "Mint green with light chocolate is the new combination, it creates such a soothing environment by using the freshness of nature."
Cotton Inc's re-interpretation of the spa trend for 2007is called Serenity. Poor, manager of home trend forecasting, sees the colors moving away from technology of the spa toward an earthier palette that has people looking outside themselves. This palette blends a vibrant blue-green called Still Water with a pale green yellow, Froth, and grayed Eucalyptus also grounds the look with a honey-toned brown called Glaze and a grayish blue purple pulled from nature in Pebble.
"In the past the spa colors were about luxury," Poor said. "Now it's more about a reflection within, looking to the outside and appreciating other cultures in an attempt to improve your mind, body and spirit."
Eiseman of the Pantone Color Institute offers a palette called Light Touch, suggesting a soft impression using colors that speak to quiet spaces in an increasingly noisy world. For 2007 this palette is modernized by taking classic pastel shades of aqua and green, pink, lavender and angora whites and infusing them with tinges of champagne, silvery gray or rose taupe.
Thomas Paul's Couture Collection pillows pair soft aqua and ecru in feather and barn-wood patterns. eLink 713
Yedi Houseware's Droplete cups and saucers offer mod patterns of cool blues and greens. eLink 712
The Bob Timberlake Collection Shells rug from Capel portrays neutral "greige" shades of gray and beige with pale blue accents. eLink 567
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