Is Color making a return this time around??

After a long decade of beige, and more beige, color would occasionally rear its head, but never for long. Will it stick around this time? Last night at the Golden Globes the gowns ushered in what might become a reign of purples in fashion. It will be tentative at first, but the first shot for color's return in home furnishings was fired by the New York Times today with an article about Hella Jongerius: Daring to Play with a Rich Palette. “'Color can bring richness, beauty and ambiguity to design, if it is used well,” she explained. “But most designers use the same colors again and again, mostly ones that are too bright, too kitschy, too gray, or too cold.'” The problem, or so Ms. Jongerius believes, is that most industrial designers don’t know how to use color. Ms. Jongerius suspects that other designers fail to make the most of color because they weren’t taught how to do so. Another problem, she says, is the influence of color forecasters, who tend to predict future trends (as their clients ask them to) rather than making considered decisions about individual colors, and how they will work together across a company’s products."

20 years ago, when colors were simply out of the paint box, color forecasters color predictions served a definite use, but as materials and textures became more complex and layered, forecasters predictions came to be less user-friendly for most products and manufacturers. I marveled at the hundreds of trend pieces that greeted 2010 with Pantone's predictions of a "turquoise" year. Interesting - but I wouldn't take that to the bank. Color, light and material are so inexorably tied together, that color cannot be considered as an entirely separate entity. The furniture manufacturer Vitra and Jongerius worked together on a color research project to help them understand the use of color in their products. Find a fascinating essay on the topic and images of the process at Jongerius's website.

At Corian, we started looking at the color gaps in the palette in July of 2007. It was obvious at the time that we were missing some of nature's happier hues. I suspect that the recent downturn had something to do with the fact that several of these colors were finally implemented for a 2010 introduction. The image above is of my very first analysis, but we never got past the first iteration during my tenure there as we continued to introduce more and more beige based on focus group favorites. Although neutrals will continue to sell best, color is still one of the best ways to stimulate interest in any product and to stand out from the competition.