Colors of the Year, 2016

Here we are, once again, perched on the edge of our seats waiting for the colors of the year announcements.  OK, maybe not all of us. OK, maybe just a few of us. OK, I don’t know anyone in the real world who is, but I bet there are some color consultants and interior decorators out there who are. I’m interested because it’s my work. It’s all a tad silly, in my humble opinion.  Miranda Priestly notwithstanding, I don’t care who picked the colors, or when, or what their motivation was, choosing a paint color — or a sweater color for that matter — should be about personal choice.

OK, so having said all that, most of the major paint companies have announced their color of the year for 2016. Pantone has yet to announce.

(These were the people who declared “Marsala” for last year. You may remember it as the washed out pinky-terracotta-burgundy-mud color that we didn’t see anywhere except in the magazines. And by the end of the year, it was nowhere to be seen at all.)

In a nutshell the colors are: Ivory Keys T16-17 from Behr, Alabaster SW7008 from Sherwin Williams, Cappuccino, 45YY 74/073 from Glidden, Buckwheat Yellow 6113-54 from Sico and Simply White OC-117 from Benjamin Moore.

With the exception of the Buckwheat Yellow, all the other choices are white.

Whether you like it or not, Benjamin Moore is the leader in paint in Canada. You won’t see any shows, articles, books or websites devoted to paint colors that do not feature BM paints.  And here I will follow the leader and talk about the Benjamin Moore choice; you will see it around a lot.

If you’ve read my column for a while, you know that there are four white categories. Blue-white, true-white, off-white and cream.  Blue-white and true white work with the grays and the cool colors of the world. Off-white and cream work with the earth-tones. (One exception is green-gray which works best with the off-whites or creams.)

True White (BM’s color) is an off-white.  It will be great with most wood tones, with yellow and warm greens like olive. It will be beautiful with orange-red, like terra cotta and it will look dirty beside gray and yellow beside blue. So be forewarned.

I like white. It creates a backdrop for the interesting stuff in a room; you never have to worry how the new painting will look on the wall or if the new duvet will clash. But that’s just me. In your home, YOU should decide.