What are the current color trends in home decor?
Anything Goes
If there is one word to describe trends in decorating today, it is eclectic. Everyone travels and collects interesting keepsakes; naturally we want to incorporate these fascinating artifacts into our home décor. Similarly, no one wants to part with great-grandmother’s heirloom lace tablecloth or grandfather’s antique umbrella stand. And certainly, we all want our homes to be a reflection of our own personal style. Home decorating is no longer about reproducing what we see in magazines, creating an exact duplicate of a “model room” right down to the picture frames and sofa cushions. No, today decorating is about adapting diverse design influences to fit our individualistic ideals. We want our homes to say something about who we are and what we believe in.
Increasingly, this means that our rooms must be multi-purpose, designed to serve a variety of different functions, ranging from combination kitchen/dining/family rooms to the blending of bedrooms with home offices. With all of this activity, casual styling is becoming much more important. Just as “dress down Fridays” have become a welcome respite from formal attire at many companies, cozy and relaxing home furnishings are making our homes a better place to both live and work.
American consumers want their homes to be both comfortable and chic, according to a national survey conducted by Village. While 74 percent of consumers say that comfort is most important in their homes, 54 percent say they want their homes to make a design statement. Fortunately, both are possible using the right combinations of color, pattern and texture.
Brave New World of Color
Room design begins with color, and consumers today have a wide spectrum of palettes from which to choose. Current color trends can be described as “elemental”—they can be loosely grouped into three main families: Earth, Fire and Water.
Princeton Marble wallpaper with Sheridan Hall Border from the Pearlescent Style collection
Earth shades include tones such as brown, sienna, mustard, moss, rust, gray and metallic tones of copper, bronze, steel and silver. Gray is one of the most directional hues, ranging from deep charcoal to pale silvery shades, such as those found in the Pearlescent Style collection by Village.
Fire colors begin with powerful reds, hot pinks and bright yellows, as well as toned-down purples such as lilac or wisteria. Orange is a color that is coming on strong, especially combined with pink or yellow. In many cases, these fiery hues are married with pigments from the Earth palette—for example, rich reds and burgundies are complemented by chocolate and mink browns in the new Raymond Waites Vintage Home and Raymond Waites Kitchen & Bath collections by Village.
Water colors are characterized by deep cool blues, blue-greens, turquoise, sea foam and, once again, gray. Paler shades such as coral, celadon and aqua serve as accents in this palette, as do neutrals such as white, vanilla, ivory and cream. These easy-to-live-with hues are used in a number of Village wallpapers and borders, including the Nobility Volume 3, Raymond Waites Vintage Home and Raymond Waites Kitchen & Bath collections.
One interesting direction in color is the use of transparency and translucence, creating barely-there tints that have a shimmer or sheen. For example, Village features a variety of wallpapers and borders with iridescent overprinting in its Pearlescent Style Collection.
In contrast to these pale pastels are pretty brights, particularly colors such as turquoise, coral, tangerine, pink, green and yellow. Village features many of these effervescent colors in charming tossed florals or stripes in the California Country Volume 2 collection.