| This love affair is coming to an end. |
| Is boring black and white, minimalist and personality-less, white-on-white-on white, gray-on-gray-on-gray, past the sell-by date? This love affair is coming to an end. Surely, we’re due for a change. |
| Yes gray, the ideal color for indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, despair. Names like Cloud Cover, Morning Fog, Mouse’s Back, Squirrel Tail, Mole’s Breath…all particularly numbing, the charisma of soppy bread. |
| Walk into just about any home design store, and you’ll see swaths of gray upholstery, bedding and accessories. Rental properties and spec houses have room upon room of what my educated eye recognizes as Benjamin Moore’s Revere Pewter and Gray Owl on the walls of bedrooms, living rooms, halls and bathrooms.Several shades of why. |
| A natural correction is taking place. |
| How did we, known not too long ago for our penchant for pastels, let ourselves slip into a haze of gray? I know some of us may be clutching our pearls at the idea of gray going by the wayside, as gray and white – the two (seemingly timeless) tones have been at the forefront of our decorating agendas for decades. In the late ‘90s, when we were coming out of our peach-beige-mania, there was more of a high-end design movement about gray and dark woods. That trickled down into mass-market decor options. Now, as the design pendulum swings back around to beiges and now, we are realizing to our dismay that we have been living life in colorless spaces for the past several years. |
| What we’re experiencing now may be a ripple effect of the lockdown.Two years of being cooped up, bound in tormented seclusion staring at the same four walls, made us want to trade in our neutrals for explosions of colours reminiscent of adventure and excitement. Their re-emergence is a possible (colourful) light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. But don’t expect to wake up in a Smartie world of colour next week. It can take months or seasons to see these trends reflected in our interiors, since they often start in fashion—the most rapid of the trend cycles—and trickle outward from there. I’ve seen nothing less in Europe this month. And a resurgence of 60’s fashion on the streets. |
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People may be ready to accept more colour in their life, but it’s often a slow step-by-step process. |
| HOMEOWNER: “I’m one of those people who knows what I like once I see it but who has a hard time visualizing how things will look in a space or what colours will work well together,” |
Maybe it starts with a toss cushion, a throw, a peice of art, a vase. Then a side chair. And, eventually, they might find the courage to paint a cheeky mural or an entire wall. |
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| Perhaps the safest colour is no colour. |
| I think we all had intentions of adding pops of colour, but found we had commitment problems. |
| As one who has never embraced gray, although I know my way up and down the gray paint chips, I have always found gray soulless. It honestly drains you, especially when you have to wake up to dull, gray winter days when all you want to do is pull the duvet over your head and go back to sleep. |
| But grays and neutrals aren’t necessarily going away, but expanding. Colours like green, which convey a nature-infused, organic reference, and a clay-like pink, mustard yellow, ochre, mulberry are increasingly being treated as neutrals.With most trends that cycle back into popularity, each new iteration will be slightly reinvented. We saw this with brass plumbing fixtures, door knobs, and cabinet hardware. Brass is now “back”, but it’s not the glossy, yellowy brass of the 80’s, it’s a rosier, non-glossy brass, with straighter lines and simpler shapes. |
| So, what colour is your future? |
| By the way, if anyone is in the market for a Betamax… |
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