Light and bright interiors have always dominated interior design, especially here in Singapore, with our increasingly smaller apartments and the rise in popularity of the Scandinavian style – think white rooms and blonde wood.
Light and bright interiors have always dominated interior design, especially here in Singapore, with our increasingly smaller apartments and the rise in popularity of the Scandinavian style – think white rooms and blonde wood. Colour experts are now predicting darker shades will be key for the next few years – Dulux Colour Futures, an annual report on colour trends, announced that a muted ochre shade, called Monarch Gold, is their Colour of the Year 2016.
It’s the latest in a line of darker, mid-tone hues that have been named the paint brand’s Colour of the Year for the past three years. “We definitely see more warmer colours in the palette than we have in previous years, so there are yellows, browns, oranges and a little bit of red, which is a mid-tone. We see some very deep blues and greens being used more as well.
Because we see metallics as important, too, we picked gold as a key colour that will stand out,” says Jeremy Rowe, the managing director of Akzo Nobel Decorative Paints (the parent company of Dulux), on the colour palette that was chosen to work with Monarch Gold, in Colour Futures. One particular group of colours, called Dark & Light, consists of deep midnight shades – this palette is a reaction to the “overuse of light”, he says.
“Light equals technology and progress, but human beings also need darkness, rest and sleep.” In tandem with a darker colour palette, decorators and homeowners are also embracing ambiguous hues that can’t be defined easily. “When people see some of these colours, they wonder if it’s a yellow or an orange. And that’s a good thing, because it creates interest in the interior design. It gets you to think about it,” says Jeremy.
Monarch Gold, a gold-in uenced ochre shade, works well with both dark and light colours.
The sombre hues of the Dark & Light palette make for a restful environment.
