Color Board

Lessons from the Kitchen

Did you ever wonder how fashion designers seem to come out with the same colors in their respective clothing lines in any given season?  Even home decor gets in on the act.  It's the Color Board aka Pantone, self-described as the world's authority on color.  They declare the palette of colors that will dominate an upcoming season in fashion and home design. 

And the Board has decided that 2011 will be the year of ~ fun.  Yep, we're gonna have fun after a couple of years of dismal economic news, home foreclosures and job losses.   In their words:

The energy of the new decade will reveal itself in 2011... We will intrigue and dazzle ourselves with unique, re-invented personalities, with fresh skills and uncluttered outlooks... We can investigate poetry, seduction, revolution, and even romance again! Colors are tending toward the invigorating and the exultant. And when a little rest is required from all the playfulness, colors are nourishing and peaceful.

We will, like children experimenting with facets of identity, try on new faces and indulge in some role-playing. One amusing vignette will be followed by another. Monday you will be a serious ornithologist, and Tuesday perhaps a sonnet-writing lover. Saturday you will be a seductress extraordinaire, and Sunday you will be an anthropologist documenting distant cultures. We will acquire some knowledge. We will enjoy it. We will be playful and constructive, and eager to share the new growth we feel within.

So if you are ready for this new playfulness, you can pick earthly colors from The Wanderer:

 Gone are the days of traveling with steamer trunks and an entourage. Savvy globetrotters move quietly from place to place, blending in, speaking softly, keeping quiet, and savoring the quiet beauties of landscape and culture, of local food and drink.

The wanderer palette captures the gentle, faded beauty of slow, earthy travel. Colors of air, water, and earth blend together in a painterly way -- in the way of memory and storytelling.

Earth red, fudge and green gables anchor the palette in an earthy way. Blue nights and riviera recall dark, faraway seas. Forever blue, purple ash, and limestone are the colors of skies remembered for their subtle beauty. Withered rose and silver peony, at the top of the palette, are colors of delight and sensuality.  

Or you can choose from The Seducer's passionate palette:

Seduction can be a subtle affair, or an all-out assault. This palette leaves all the options open. Apricot orange, lavender, paprika and claret red glow gently with health and desire -- and can kindle a similarly gentle response.

Fiesta, festival fuchsia, byzantium and Chinese red paint a picture of fiery passion that cannot be easily contained. They promise luscious satisfaction and ignite the imagination.

High-rise and blue graphite provide light and dark neutrals against which all the tones of passion can contrast.    

And if all else fails, you can tap into your Revolutionary color self:

The green revolution! Does it refer to the vast movement toward ecological sustainability? To glimmers of change in the Middle East? Or to the recovery of global economies? Whatever your answer, vivid shades of green from lime to deep mint on the bright side and Amazon and jungle green on the dark are pulsing with life, energy and change. These are positive, vibrant colors -- with more than enough strength to interact with each other and a single, strong accent.

Jumble the greens up and add a single energized accent: blazing yellow or amparo blue or chili pepper. In this context, bright white is not merely clean, it is also full of life and contrast.

The effects of these green shades resonate with futuristic references to technology, but also to imagery derived from stories unfolding right now as well as to ironic re-examination of romances from the past.

I am not making this stuff up.  I wish someone would pay me to write this drivel, oops, copy.  Reminds me of the Peterman Catalog from the Seinfeld show.

So where was I?  Oh yes, the Color Board.  What brought them to mind?  I am choosing between two greens for my back splash and neither one is exactly the color I had envisioned.  Now I will admit, I'm kinda picky about my colors, what with my artsy background and all, and I really am splitting hairs on this; but if the Color Board has deemed green as one of its chosen for 2011, then why can't I find the green I want?  Oh, wait a minute, it's 2010.  THAT's my problem!

(Note from the blogmeister:  Information on Pantene's 2011 color choices was copied from www.Fire Mountain Gems & Beads.)