Color and patterns in nature have evolved to serve specific goals of getting food and staying safe from becoming food. But for mankind, it has become something much more than mere signaling and survival in the wild. Color has become a means to express feelings, and as something capable of bringing to the surface something hidden and true, it has become one of the first tools of artmaking. Color has not only stayed in the focus of humanity, but it has also become an essential part of the ever-changing culture. We love colors, and we love to celebrate them by building trends around them. We use colors to set the atmosphere of our environments, and we use them to define our styles. Colors are symbols and the means for making a statement about our moods. And 2023 is all about mood: be it dark or light, the year’s new colors are here to connect us back to nature and surround us with an air of contemporaryity. Which one fits your mood the best?
Color and mood
The effect color has on our mood is a fascinating field of research, and knowing how it works is useful for creatives, or anybody, whose work involves creating an atmosphere in a particular environment. The psychology of light and color is an integral part of designing an interior: depending on the purpose of the building, color can serve designation and enhance the mood. In the same way, when not used well, color can destroy a designated area’s mood and hinder functionality. Knowing how to use them makes all the difference in an interior.
New hues of contemporary
The color trends for 2023 have so much character, they transform the room into a live entity with a personality. Many of the new colors from the leading paint companies are so good you might want to use them all at once. Some are perfect for refreshing walls, others for lively accent furniture or rich draperies. The color of the year from Pantone is Viva Magenta, a bold, primordial, but a very elegant color that awakens our senses to the exploding beauty and energy of nature. But new color tendencies at other companies don’t fall behind either: many of them invite you to rethink the conventional narratives of “natural”. They invite you to experiment with vibrant color, dark and moody spaces, and elegant, calm neutrals to upgrade your home: a breath of fresh contemporary air between the walls. The new palette encompasses a wide variety of options to choose from. Whether you have a robust eccentric personality or are more sensitive and poetic, you’ll find a combination to fit you. Lovers of natural colors, this is your time! Let’s see what we have!
Viva Magenta from Pantone
Long live Magenta! Pantone’s color of the year for 2023 is an absolutely stunning choice. Pantone’s official page describes the color as nature-inspired, connecting our spirits to nature’s primordial, archaic force and encouraging us to discover it in ourselves. Pantone’s color of the year is reminiscent of the cochineal red, one of the top-quality natural dyes of the highest value in antiquity. Bold and refined, Viva Magenta is a peculiarly temperamental color. As one, it can be used ideally for accent furniture of wild shapes, but it could also work beautifully as an accent wall.
Blank Canvas by Behr
Behr’s new color of the year for 2023 is also an unexpected choice, and it is exactly what you think it is. Blank Canvas brings the meditative mood of the yet unpainted surface of a fresh canvas. With the calmness of the yet unhappened and the excitement of what could be, Blank Canvas is nothing but boring, bringing an intriguing, discreet color to 2023’s palette. The beautiful, light, broken white color makes an excellent base that leaves creativity flowing without setting a predefined course. Behr’s selection of colors for 2023 comprises soft but characteristic grays and pastels that make a moderate alternative to the current trends. The warm white Blank Canvas harmonizes excellently with many colors of the new tendencies, making it a necessary neutral to work with.
Raspberry Blush by Benjamin Moore
Benjamin Moore came with colors that create an open and optimistic mood. They are upfront, direct and courageous, even with their selection’s darker, more sensitive colors. Raspberry Blush is a brilliant color, a warm and saturated mid-tone coral hue, that is maybe best described by creating a happy mood. This color emanates joy and invites us to play. Benjamin Moore came with a beautiful selection of earthy tones, too. Those colors are nothing you could easily anticipate, though. A beautiful dark brown, Wenge is the new star of dark, moody interiors, and for a reason: this one is hard to grasp, creating a sense of mystery and sophistication. Who wouldn’t want to succumb to that?
Sherwin Williams’s Redend Point
2023’s color of the year at Sherwin Williams came out to be Redend Point. The highlighted color gives the impression of powdery earth; it’s a natural porcelain color with just a hint of pinkish-mauvish tones. This color is so similar to earth you can almost feel the oily substance. It harmonizes perfectly with the other colors on this year’s palette at Sherwin Williams, all of them creating a warm, earthy, natural mood for us to relax in. Those neutrals create a perfect balance to coat any home in a soothing atmosphere. The darkest on their spectrum, Urbane Bronze, is the equivalent of Benjamin Moore’s Wenge: the dark, slightly greenish brown defines elegance.
To wind up,
As human beings, we have a special gift of nature to see and distinguish between quite a broad spectrum of colors. We have used those to express feelings since forever, and it continues to be an area with infinite combinations and possibilities. We instinctually attach meaning to them and use them to define our environment and ourselves. Color trends change with us as we change, but the primordial feelings they carry remain the same. There’s nothing more contemporary than a message as old as mankind finding new meaning in the now. This year’s colors selected by the leading paint companies invite us to connect back to this natural side of ours and enjoy the energizing, soothing, or poetic moods these colors have the power to communicate.
