You will find it aesthetically pleasing when blue is paired with silver and gray. You will feel that blues paired with browns are played out. You just don’t know it yet.
So say the color prognosticators at the Color Marketing Group, based in Alexandria, Va. The 1,000-member industry association group has for decades sought to forecast color trends years in advance, giving its members a better chance to get their production schedules in sync with consumer tastes. Its members include representatives from General Motors Corp., Kimberly-Clark Co. (which puts a lot of thought into the color schemes for its Kleenex boxes) and independent designers who do work for consumer giants like Procter &Gamble.
A similar group, the Color Association of the United States, based in New York, has been forecasting color trends since 1915.
Forecasting color trends is serious business, the trade groups say. For one, it’s important that various industries can coordinate, so the offerings from a paint manufacturer don’t clash with those produced by furniture makers, for example. In addition, designers cite multiple studies that show color selection is playing an increasing role in consumer purchases.
“It’s a more sophisticated, design-aware consumer today,” said Christopher Webb, color trend designer for GM North America. Webb said 40 percent of consumers will walk out of a dealership and choose a different brand if the color choices aren’t acceptable.
Doty Horn, a Color Marketing Group member and director of color and design for Benjamin Moore Paints, said the ubiquity of home makeover shows on TV has increased awareness among consumers about their remodeling options and color choices.
The groups claim strong a track record, though they admit to a certain extent that their forecasts can become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Still, they are sensitive to the notion of a secretive color cabal dictating color selections to the masses.
Color Marketing Group President Jack Bredenfoerder said the forecasts pick up on recognizable trends that would advance regardless of whether Color Marketing Group had identified them.
Christine Chow, the color association’s membership director, said the trend forecasts have to make sense to the designers, or they wouldn’t rely on them.
“They don’t have to do what we suggest unless it makes sense to them,” Chow said. “And we’re not sitting in our offices tossing at dart boards” to make our predictions.
On a recent window shopping trip in Tysons Corner, Va., consumer Celia Coughlin of Fairfax said you can’t help but notice the color trends as they come and go from the marketplace, but she is generally not swayed.
“I look at what would fit with what’s already in my home” rather than hopping on the latest color trend, she said.
Still, she said she can use the cycles to her advantage particularly in fashion, where colors change more frequently.
“I know I can get what I want a few months down the road” in clearance and overstock sales once retailers swap out one color for another, she said.
Globalization and the increasing influence of countries like China and India are role in our color choices. Bredenfoerder said the traditional spice colors associated with India have been in vogue, and with that has come a revival of teal, a blue shade which complements them.
Even politics can play a role. Bredenfoerder said he expects in 2009 that the inauguration of a new president to replace George Bush will lead to a more optimistic outlook, and will help push colors to brighter hues.
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