A close friend and I were discussing color the other day. We we talking about what colors and color combinations have lost their modern punch, colors that seem so now that they already seem to be passe, and what colors/combos might fall into favor in a few years.
It seems that orange used to be the modern flag color, but it definitely has been out of favor for a few years ... it was very much a 90s modern revival color to me. The now colors/combos that are already leaving us seem to be powder blue and brown or certain limey greens.
I would be interested to know if anyone has the same or different observations to the above. In addition, is there a sure science to predicting color fads in design?
I know in music things tend to run in pretty predictable cycles to an extent ... not an exact science, but there is a sense of unintended order to it.
Orange
Whitespike,
I might disagree with your view of orange. Orange seems to be very popular right now - for example, if you go to www.apartmenttherapy.com and look at that site's best-use-of-color contest from last year, orange was probably the most dominant color choice among the contestants. Probably because orange is, as you stated, a modern flag color.
As for popular colors in the future, I couldn't answer that for the life of me. Hopefully chocolate brown will remain "in" for a while, as it took a lot of work to paint my bedroom that color.
I did see an HGTV special last year in which "color experts" picked what would be the hottest colors for decorating for the following year. It seemed that the hot decorating colors tended to follow from what colors were hot on fashion runways.
David
The Parisian clothes designers..
were showing recently very grim looking clothes that supposedly expressed the have and have not conflict in France as well as the state of the world enmeshed in terroism, warfare, oil scares and economic crisis. the clothes the models wore all had a highly stylized ragged look and the models on the runways seemed as if they were just emerging from a disaster frayed and roughed up, but miraculously still alive. The colors were dark, almost dirty looking. Black, dark blue and grey mixed with military greens, navy, and some cammie, if I remember correctly, and I wouldn't swear that I do.
My hunch is that color and design will bifurcate between a dark, ragged look (dark colors that shoulder against each other improbably) and a light,ascetic, geometric, almost surreally balanced, zen look that combines metals, woods and masonry to express the need of those outside the line fire and calamity to have some order as they wait to see if disaster befalls them, too. I would look to color wheel opposites that can strike a calming balance.
In short I wouldn't look to one color to be characteristic, but rather the interplay of dark colors to contribute to the ragged effect on the one hand, and a zen interplay of light and dark colors to contribute to an uneasy balance on the other. I believe the world is exceedingly and deeply polarized today and will likely grow more so as oligarchs struggle amongst themselves for control and continue a chain of shattering events in the process.
That's my speculation. but if i had to bet capital on production, i'd still resort to market research on color preferences and just ask people what colors they like--the same way the bigs have done for a long time.
I obsess about color...
I am forever looking at shades, hues tones and tints. I think about how color affects mood, how light affects color and how people respond to color seasonally. It all fascinates me.
DCW, you are right about the link of fashion to interior design and about this year's runway colors. I find your link to current events interesting and unfortunately, probably accurate, our world is not in a happy place right now. I shouldn't have read last week's Time magazine on global warming, I've been depressed ever since.
DavidDC, nice to hear from you, you've not been around for a bit. Yours and whitepsike's observation on orange are, I believe, both correct. It is the color most associated with 'modern', I think. And it does seem to be enjoying a rather long run of positive opinion at the moment. I'm betting it will stay on for a bit longer mostly due to it's shock value. However, orange is, traditionally, the color most disliked by the general public. Blue being generally the most popular. I always found that curious as they are complements and complementary color schemes are very popular. But blue seems to end up paired mostly with yellow instead.
Cracker's comment about the Color Marketing Group is also spot on. The idea that there are pontificates of color somewhere that predict, and to some degree control, the colors that are used in the marketplace is such a peculiar thought to me. Color is a very personal thing, to me nearly holy. Everyone responds differently to color and everyone should use only those color that please them. The idea that DavidDC will have to repaint his bedroom when chocolate brown goes out of style is a sad thought in my book. Keep the color if it pleases you and paint it over only when you feel a change of heart, not because it's 'in'.
Several years ago I hit on a citron green color that really looked great in my home, made me feel happy and kept a feeling of summer in the house in the dead of winter. We use a lot of it in differing shades and touches here and there. Then a couple of year's ago, suddenly, the color was trendy and it overwhelmed the senses from every venue. I have held my breath since then waiting for it to go 'out' so that I can feel my sense ownership come back this color. In my head I think of it as mine and I don't want to share.
Color should be like that, personal and emotional, but somehow it doesn't work that way.
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