We spent the last two blogs looking at the colours of the year, many of which I absolutely love. What the colours of the year amount to, though, is trend-setting...or is it? Trends are a strange thing, and it’s hard to know when someone is establishing a trend, guessing at a trend, or riding a trend’s coattails. Trends can be seen in two similar lights; they are either a general change in how people are acting, or a new development in fashion, design, music or other aesthetic practices. When considering trends, then, it’s important to consider the relation between the two types; our aesthetic preferences may change depending on general changes to how we act.
Take the colours of the year, for example. They all have one thing in common, except perhaps for Metropolitan: they are meant to soothe, relax, take you back to nature. We know that many of the colours of the year are selected through expert panels who evaluate what colours they think will reflect our aesthetic tastes in the coming year. This must in some ways evaluate the first definition of trend; first, the companies evaluate how they think we’ll want to feel, what vibe we’ll want to emanate. Colour psychology plays an important role in selecting a colour of the year, so human psychology must as well. In 2019, then, the experts think we’ll all want to calm down, and maybe to invigorate ourselves a bit, so we get Living Coral.
When Pantone releases their colour of the year, people scramble to create collaborations, incorporate the colour into their designs; the colour is adopted very quickly. There’s an argument to be made, then, that the colours of the year aren’t predicting trends, they’re setting them. When we see these colours all of the place, is it possible that it will influence our behaviour, our feelings, our trends? Should that be the case, one could argue that by choosing colours of the year, colour creators aren’t only setting aesthetic trends, they’re actually setting up emotional expectations for the year to come. Fortunately, the expert panels tend to choose colours with very positive descriptions; no one wants to buy colours that will make them feel sad all year round. Perhaps, then, incorporating the colours of the year can actually make our world a better place?
Then again, this might all be thinking too much about it. We all want to trend in a positive direction, but aesthetic trends come and go. The colours of the year this year might all go down as quite classic; I can see them being used in a lot of settings, because “calming” generally means the colour will play well with others. When looking at the colour schemes in your home, great Winnipeg painting companies will be able to tell when something is just a trend, and when something is going to be classic. There’s a lot of potentially classic looks this year, so you’ll almost certainly be able to find something from one of the colours that will suit your home for years to come.
