The New-tralizing of COLOR

If there is one thing we've learned about color, it's that there's no one-size-fits-all approach. Every prognosticator has her own rainbow of “emerging” palettes for the season. It's enough to make one wonder if there's any color that's not emerging.

So what will be coloring our world in the coming year? According to trend expert Leatrice Eiseman, of Pantone Inc., Carlstadt, New Jersey, home furnishings colors for 2006 show interesting new directions, which she breaks down into three major pathways: a sophisticated “uptown” look, a fun and funky “downtown” look, and an out-of-town bucolic look that she likens to “places where we want to be.”

In the past two years, the market has been awash in bright color, with pinks and yellow-greens especially dominant, and turquoise and coral close behind. But the color wheel is turning. For 2006, neutral tones will re-emerge to temper the bold tones of the last few years.

The return of neutrals doesn't mean boring beige, however. These colorways are as rich and diverse as their rainbow relatives, evoking images from sandy beaches to atmospheric fog. The beiges that are on the horizon have underlying tints of peach, cream, lilac, pink, and champagne.

Within the neutrals, white emerges pure and clean, with a depth that implies subtle color, such as an icy, shimmering pale blue-ish shade. Both Eiseman and Michelle Lamb of Marketing Directions point to the importance of gray, which ranges from “coal-dusted darks to faded fog-like neutrals.” These grays, observes Lamb, “make everything they touch feel new.” She suggests using them with reds, pinks, browns, and other gray shades. The Pantone forecast shows them paired with blues, greens, yellows, and purples.

According to Eiseman, brown maintains its strong presence (appealing especially to a younger demographic) partly because of its association with two favorite flavors: coffee and chocolate. Therefore, we'll continue to see mocha, chocolate, and rosy browns used prominently on the darker side of the spectrum, along with lighter values such as pecan, “café au lait” tans, and peachy beiges. These hues balance well with other colors, creating sophisticated combinations.

Of course, color is not going away — it's just a rebalancing, with color moving in two key directions: maturing into deeper, richer jewel tones, and toning down to a hue between pastel and bright. It represents a refreshing break from the fully saturated brights. Sophisticated mid-tones add quiet drama to decor with a rich, luxurious feeling that ties into those “uptown” looks. Deep wine reds, purples, ginger, mossy-yellowed greens, and navy and teal blues come into play in this palette.

The toned-down lights are primary in the more “go-out-of-town” looks. These are the playful hues of the seaside or a picnic. But they're not pastel, and they are not bright. They're a “nuance of in-between,” says Eiseman. In this palette, coral is toned down to melon, and “Shrek” green is transformed to Lily Green.

But pigment isn't the only element of color that drives trends. Other “finishing” qualities — such as opacity, texture and pattern, luster and sheen — are equally important, and also figure strongly in the color directions emerging for 2006.

One directional element is a glass-like transparency of color that adds clarity and depth, creating a luminous glow. Another element is texture and pattern that creates a tone-on-tone effect with the same color. This is particularly directional in whites, where stencils, cut-outs, and other piecework are being used to create the perception of tonal texture through the interplay of light and shadow.

Metallic sheens are moving beyond traditional gold, bronze, and silver, as light-reflecting finishes appear in blues, pinks, greens, and lavenders. Pearl and opalescent finishes also figure prominently in both fashion and home decor, their luster adding a richness to base colors, and, in the case of opalescence, a certain fire from the reflected light.

And what about last year's colors? Did we just throw them out? Some, like the Lipstick Red, are moving forward as a continuing part of a sophisticated, contemporary palette and others are retreating, taking a rest only to be rediscovered at a future date.