We were struck by how striking patterns and bright colours (think orange at Decorex) punctuated the displays at last year’s autumn home interiors shows, as the movers and shakers in the industry put their markers down for this year’s hot trends and hues.
And it doesn’t take long to see where the world of soft furnishings takes its inspiration from. Indeed the Fashion Report 2013 in this month’s issue of Elle Decoration leads with the headline “how the catwalk influences the way we live”.
So what is the world of fashion predicting for 2013, and how has this translated into the world of soft furnishings?
From the catwalk to the living room…
A stunning feature in this month’s issue of Harpers Bazaar (above, top) highlights how fashion designers are showcasing a blazing spectrum of colours for 2013 – from hot orange, red, yellow amber and pink tones, to cool serene hues of the ocean.
HUE DARES WINS! and the tabloids (see You magazine above) have translated this theme to everyday life by showing how these hues have hit the high street.
And the science behind this year’s colours – a wonderful balancing of colour…
We’ve put together some pins on our Pinterest page to give you a general overview of how the Spring/Summer colours feature in this year’s soft furnishings.
The Pantone Colour Institute explain why these colours are so important and why they instill the sense of balance that the Institute feel is the theme for 2013 Spring/ Summer. “We’re always seeking balance in our lives but we don’t often think about colour as an expression of balance” says executive director Leatrice Eiseman.
So here’s their run down of the key colours for Spring /Summer 2013, with our take on how these colours have translated into this year’s soft furnishings schemes:
Novel Neutrals:
Dusk blue – we don’t think about blue as neutral but in nature, blue is a background to almost everything and works seemlessly with the foreground colours. Calm and serenity are the catch words here (below, our embroidered motif linen union Signature Range).
Grayed Jade – has a strong grey undertone and functions perfectly as a neutral colour because of the strong grey undertone.
Linen – a “nude” like colour with a quality that gives it a light, diapherous airy feeling, enabling it to function effortlessly as a neutral (below, our embroidered corn ear and dragonfly motifs on a nude/pink linen union background).
Balancing light and bright
Emerald – a brighter, vivid colour with a sense of clarity – a beautiful spring colour that gives a marvellous grounding for other colours in the palette.
African violet – a floral colour as the name implies – an attachment to the exotic that combines wonderfully with our other Spring/ Summer 2013 colours. Swaffer have captured this with their Whitworth Linen (Gallery Range) – below.
Nectarine – the answer to where orange has been for last few years. A warm coral touch.
Poppy Red – Spring time has to have some fun shades of red. A wonderful colour for combining and for creating that Spring time sense of exhuberance.
Lemon Zest – makes us smile, stop and think sunshine, and is a wonderful balancing colour to use with some of our neutral colours.
Tender Shoots – a third green showing us the importance of greens in Spring/ Summer 2013. An exhuberant, fun attention getter that bounces off our other 2013 palette colours beautifully.
Monaco Blue – the anchor of the entire group. Not the typical navy blue we often think of, but hightened to provide a little extra cheer whilst still being a wonderful, calm, anchoring colour to every other colour in the palette.
Colour and fabric as a means of self expression
So this year, it’s all about achieving a sense of balance in our soft furnishings. The Spring/ Summer palette colours that first surfaced on the catwalk now pervade the world of soft furnishings and work effortlessly together, enabling us to combine calming neutrals with more vivid exuberant colours for a perfectly balanced scheme.
But it’s not just about colour. Many of the major fabric suppliers heavily feature floral designs in this year’s collections (see African Violet above). Meanwhile the fashion world is once again gripped by the monochrome trend, and this has translated into bold, graphic patterns in the home.
