Color My World

June 30, 2006  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in on July 2006 The impact of color was never illustrated more brilliantly than in the film “The Wizard of Oz.” When Dorothy steps out of her house,
fantastically transported and dropped into a strange land, the brightness is wonderful and shocking. And the heart of the film only grows when she wakes up in Kansas, again in black-and-white, and learns that all of the elements that she so loved about Oz were with her all along.

This relates to how the psychology of color affects us as we live our lives. There are a million details our homes share about us to our visitors and guests. Just as a photograph tells a story, so do the books on the shelves, the music collection, furniture, objects of art. But lurking alongside--and inside--all these items, another story is being told. A story of color. And the story and psychology of color needs to come to the foreground as retailers continue to develop a lifelong dialog with their customers.

Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of premiere color forecasters Pantone, says she often gets into random discussions with total strangers about color. And more often than not, she ends up turning them around to her way of thinking.



Brown Is Back

“My specialty is psychology of color,” said Eiseman. “I got into the whole brown issue with a guy on a plane, he said he didn’t like brown. He said he loved his home and the colors in it, and I asked them to describe them to me. He gave me a soliloquy about the cabinets in his kitchen; then I reminded him that wood is brown, and he was describing shades of brown. Mahogany, an armoire, people don’t think of it as brown, they think of it as a wood tone. They take brown for granted.”

Not only is brown a key player in Pantone’s color forecast for this upcoming season (Eiseman said chestnut is particularly key), brown and all the shades it consists of perfectly illustrate how Eiseman wants the average consumer to embrace seeing colors the way an artist or designer does.

“Brown has taken on a whole new presence, came on in the ‘90s. I call it the Starbucks phenomenon,” said Eiseman. “Just as Starbucks became a coffee experience, brown became a rich, robust, presence. Consumers had this whole new association with this chocolate shade that they didn’t have before.”

Just as espresso, café au lait, and café americano became a part of the vernacular, Eiseman hopes that people will recognize these colors as an important element of the stuff that surrounds us, instead of merely a caffeinated beverage.

“J. Crew did a lot for the color brown in their catalogues, as did Michael Kors with his cashmere sweater sets,” she said. “You have this whole new acceptance of brown, to the point where UPS decided to glamorize their image rather than change their uniforms. ‘What can brown do for you’ is a slogan people latch onto and recognize.”

“Brown is like black,” Eiseman continued. “People don’t really wear it head to toe. Even though people say not everybody can wear brown head to toe, if brown is going to be a background to claret red or blue, it’s fantastic. Think of all the values of brown. There’s umber, there’s sienna, there are blond woods and rich dark woods.”



Color Tells A Story

And let us never forget that the furniture industry is a fashion industry as well.

“Yes, we build a story with color,” Eiseman said. “You have a theme and try to expand on it as much as possible, providing as many points of entry to people as there are ways of looking at the world. my inspiration is not done in an ivory tower. I go to trade shows, and the entertainment world is a huge influence. We don’t say there’s a ‘hot’ color. That is not good business practice. The hot color is an old concept.”

Pantone’s collections of color palettes for the furnishings industry, the View Home 2007 is currently available on Pantone’s Web site, www.pantone.com, for the manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $275. Not only does Pantone design color collections, but they use beautiful language to help sell the colors. Like this selection: “A Light Touch suggests a soft impression–the deft use of softer colors that speak of quiet spaces in an increasingly noisy world. For many people, it is a comfort zone to return to again and again. The challenge is how to keep it looking up–to–date. Modernizing a pastel palette can be skillfully and easily done by re–inventing the colors and the color combinations. Take the classic pastels of foamy aquas and greens, pinks and lavenders, powdery blues, sun–tinged yellows and angora whites to the next level by infusing them with a touch of champagne, or by introducing the sophistication of a silvery gray or rosy taupe.”

Christine Chow, membership director for the The Color Association, has good ideas on helping retailers use color as a way to open a dialog between retailers and customers.

“Color trends help in two ways. One is in buying, which is more of an editing process,” she said. “The other is with with marketing. color is one of the first things that people notice, without even thinking. It’s the first thing they’re drawn to. It may not even be conscious. The color of your interiors is not the only way to think about it. It comes down to product, too. Customers now are very sophisticated and design-savvy. You’re not looking for something that’s just pretty, you’re looking for something that has a coherent message. Color is one of the fastest ways to establish a message. Color hues can establish whether a product is cheap, moderate, or expensive. It’s hard to trump color as a means to measure the overall worth of an item.”

One tip for retailers is to incorporate a color story in the store’s flow. Chow says her favorite stores have a focused color story, “so walking in one has a more cohesive experience.”

Lisa Jenkins, architechual account executive at Sherwin-Williams, says another big factor inspiring color trends is our digital lifestles. Need proof? Check out some of Sherwin-Williams newest color names: Online, Software and Cyberspace, a dark gray. But color is still king.

"We study the effects of LED lighting; when you think about how many times a day we look at LED screens, we are constantly exposed to the brighness of digital images. It has an effect on us. There's a clarity to computer screens, it certanly has had an effect to the direction color has taken. Color has become more acceptable. whether you're a kindergardener or a 50-something at work, we crave color." HFB