It seems quite remarkable but we are now beginning a third calendar year of the coronavirus era. Nearly two (chronological) years since the outbreak of the most unprecedented and unpredictable global health upheaval in our lives, the daily news bulletins and social media posts remain dominated by COVID-19 and its ongoing repercussions (and variants).
It’s not just the “hard news” of updated recommendations and latest statistics. From early-2020, throughout 2021 and now into 2022, just about every aspect of our lifestyles has invariably involved some reference to or been influenced by the pandemic. Including our own world of home décor and design – and specifically latest colour trends.
In our last issue, we reported that Dulux had announced that their colour of the year for 2022 would be “Bright Skies”, as we “long for a fresh approach and a new start”. Now, both Pantone and Shutterstock have joined the colours party.
Declaring that “serenity” would be taking centre stage in 2022 (how we wish!), Shutterstock revealed that their data analysts and design experts had “ploughed through billions of bits of data to reveal what colours the design world is gravitating towards next. And this time around we’ve included added insights from Shutterstock.AI, uniquely capable of deciphering how a specific colour performs in digital media.”
And their conclusions? The colours “climbing the charts in the year to come” are: “Calming Coral”, “Velvet Violet” and “Pacific Pink”, with green (emerald, jade, lime and mint) also “reigning supreme”.
So that brings us to Pantone, arguably the pre-eminent colour authority for the international design community. Opting for the rather curiously named “Very Peri” hue, they say it “helps us to embrace this altered landscape of possibilities, opening us up to a new vision as we rewrite our lives”.
Described as encompassing the qualities of blues while also possessing a violet-red undertone, “PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri is a symbol of the global zeitgeist of the moment and the transition we are going through. As we emerge from an intense period of isolation, our notions and standards are changing, and our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways. Digital design helps us to stretch the limits of reality, opening the door to a dynamic virtual world where we can explore and create new colour possibilities.”
Finally, the colour-fest season aside, the major industry exhibitions are taking tentative steps to move on from the Zoom presentations of 2020 and 2021 and resume a more presential program of events this year. First off the rank (obviously, depending on pandemic developments after Home & Lifestyle Magazine went to press) will be Maison&Object.
The theme for their Paris show, from 20 to 24 January, is “New luxuries: between Über luxury and Lux populis”. The former, they explain, “combines fine crafts with new technology, with one foot in the past and the other firmly in the future”, while the latter “rides the pop culture wave, taking inspiration from street culture, driven by a generation raised on reality TV, Instagram and Tik Tok, and attentive to values of inclusion”.
The organisers pledge that “the safety of our clients is at the core of our preoccupations”. This is a reassuring sentiment that we can only hope prevails in the wider society as another year with COVID begins – amidst continuing caution but also tinged with a dose of patient optimism that things will surely improve over time.
Home & Lifestyle Magazine
