The big news rocking the design world today is the announcement of not one, but two colors of the year for 2016. For the first time, the trend forecasting company Pantone has unveiled two selections – a light blue called Serenity and a pink called Rose Quartz. So keep your eyes peeled for everything from cardigans to coffee makers in those hues next year.
The color expert who leads this selection process doesn’t live in a fashion mecca such as New York or Paris. Instead, Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, makes her home right here on Bainbridge Island.
There’s no way to sugarcoat this – the Puget Sound region tends toward the gray this time of year. But on a recent tour of her garden, Eiseman noticed lots of color, even in late fall.
She pointed out hydrangea bushes, where the flowers are now drooping and have turned mostly a muted green.
“Hydrangeas, I think, are sometimes more beautiful when they’ve died than when they’re alive,” she said, pointing out shades of pink and blue that still tinge the blossoms. As it turns out, those are the colors that she and her team picked for 2016.
A Family Tradition
Eiseman has spent her whole life noticing the way colors work together. It runs in her family. Her mom would paint the inside of their home in Baltimore a new shade every spring, even the piano.
“By the time we moved from that house, it must have had at least 20 to 25 coats of paint on it,” she said. “I don’t know how the movers ever picked it up and got it out of there. The weight must have been horrendous.”
Once, her mom was so enthusiastic with her paintbrush that she painted the broiler.
“Which was not a good idea because the next time she plugged it in, of course, we almost had the house burn down,” she said. “But that’s the kind of encouragement I got when I was a kid.”
Naturally, Eiseman remembers the color her mom used to paint the broiler: Nile green.
Now Eiseman and her team travel the world to spot color trends. They look at upcoming art exhibits, movies that are going to come out, and what fashion designers are working on, all as part of an effort to figure out what shade matches how people are feeling.
`Symbolic Meaning'
The year 2010 was turquoise – a hint of a tropical vacation in the midst of a lousy economy. The 2015 color of the year was marsala, a dark red that reminds people of wine and eating a good meal. The 2016 shades are “welcoming colors” that are “an antidote to the stress of modern day lives,” Pantone said in a press release.
“The color has to have some symbolic meaning,” Eiseman said. “What are people telling us their needs are, and how can we help to fulfill those needs with a symbolic color?”
Still, the color of the year is not as well known outside the design world. In a Seattle neighborhood filled with tech workers, almost no one has heard of the 2015 color, Marsala.
“Never heard of that word before,” said Jennifer Turner.
“No, I don’t even know what that is,” said Johnny Beuscher. “Marsala? Like the wine?”
But for people who work in everything from product design to advertising to fashion, the color of the year is a big deal. Even more important to designers are Pantone’s big books of color chips, each of which is numbered so that printers anywhere in the world can get the exact shade.
Pantone's Importance
“I would say it’s as important to us as Apple computers are, Mac computers, or the Adobe software that we use,” said Joseph Hughes, art director at Adcom, an ad agency in Cleveland.
He says he pays attention to the color of the year, but he doesn’t go bonkers incorporating each new shade.
“If you kind of misuse one of these trendy colors, you’re going to end up with something that’s really going to look old in a couple of years,” Hughes said.
Eiseman doesn’t expect everyone to rush out and cloak themselves in the latest color.
“It would be an awfully dull world if everybody hopped on the same bandwagon and did exactly the same thing,” she said.
Eiseman's Philosophy: Have Fun
She just wants people to experiment. Eiseman says she’s even inspired some of her neighbors on Bainbridge Island to break out of their Northwest neutrals.
“They will walk up to me and say, `Lee, look; there’s your color of the year; do you like it? What do you think?’” she said. “I get such a big kick out of that. It gets people involved in the usage of color, and that’s what it’s all about for me.”
To keep her own spirits up in the rainy months, Eiseman has painted her living room a light yellow to evoke sunlight. And she painted one bathroom – including the ceiling – maroon. Because well, why not?
