Is Our Color Palette Changing Because of the Recession?
By Bill Primavera
The Home Guru
As published in The Examiner in Westchester and Putnam
It’s funny sometimes how we gain knowledge, shape our preferences, or come to realizations about trends quite by accident. Just recently I traveled a circuitous route to discover that the color palette for our homes is changing suddenly and dramatically. Our color preferences are changing from pastels to darker, richer colors. And, knowing just enough about psychology to be dangerous, but enough about the psychology of color to lend some credible perspective, I suspect that the recession is at the heart of it.
My realization was prompted by my annoyance at a suspected public relations effort to draw consumers and home decorators back to the use of wallpaper. Oprah had declared on one of her shows last spring that wallpaper is back in a big way and, just last month, Associated Press ran a feature that declared wallpaper was hot again. As a public relations practitioner myself who just happens to dabble in real estate, I am keenly aware that hype can trump the reality of a situation and from personal observation in the homes I’ve listed or sold recently, I know that homeowners are walking away from wallpapers in droves. Another indicator is that paint stores I’ve visited have been closing down their wallpaper departments.
However, I checked out my suspicions by calling local decorating and paint stores to see how wallpapers were selling or not selling. Rob Diamond, the Wallauer Design Center in Mohegan Lake confirmed that wallpaper is at a low ebb in popularity. “It comes and goes,” he said “and now it happens to be at a low point.” “Why do you think?” I asked. “I think it’s primarily the greater cost and the fact that wallpapering is labor intensive,” he responded. “After you’ve spent more money for paper than you would for paint, you need a professional to install it, and after you get tired of it, it’s a job to strip it down, and then you have a mess in the room.” As an unsolicited aside, he added, “and people are choosing darker colors of paint right now.”
This one comment gave me my “aha” moment. Yes, I’ve seen more intense colors of late, covering the pastels and neutrals of recent years. In their place is dark umber in living rooms and family rooms, deep red in the dining rooms, bright crayola yellow in kitchens, and darker blues and greens in the bedrooms.
Wherever the meanings and effects of color may originate – whether from scientific studies, feng shui, voodoo or mineral energies – we would all agree that we relate to different colors and their shades in certain ways. Choice of color in the home is particularly interesting because it is the place where we spend the most time and the place where we have control over the environment we want to create for ourselves.
While color has been studied scientifically, especially for commercial use, our choices are most often based on a very personal gut reaction, or an unexpressed need for the particular energies color imparts. It’s psychological, and it’s actually physical. Color is a perception, a response of the brain to data received by the visual systems.
Growing up, my family lived in a small bungalow style home with three bedrooms: one for my parents, one for my sister and one for my older brother and me. When my brother joined the Army, I finally got my own room and I immediately started pestering my parents to allow me to re-paint it. And, there was only one color I wanted: deep, rich red. My mother thought I was going through a stage. Why would a 15- year-old want a room of that color when the rest of the house was painted in pastels? I insisted and eventually won out.
Only after studying the psychology of color do I recognize my need at a somewhat volatile age for an environment that expressed power, control and excitement. Now, I understand the red power tie for men and the red carpet for celebrities and VIPs. A stimulant, red is the hottest of the warm colors and studies have shown that it affects the rate of respiration and blood pressure. Stop signs and stop lights are authoritative red and get the drivers’ attention. Red suggests speed combined with confidence. In feng shui, red is the energy of arousal. It is hot, passionate, rich and celebratory, so it would make sense that more people today are using it in their dining rooms to intensify and stimulate the gathering experience.
Brown and all its variations are considered a stabilizing color in that it’s the color of earth. Recently many shades of brown have been used in family rooms. Medium shades of brown create a warm, comfortable feeling of wholesomeness, naturalness and dependability. In an unstable economic environment, wouldn’t this seem to be a likely choice for anchoring the room where the family spends most of its time?
Researchers have found that green is a soothing color. Note that guests waiting to appear on television often wait in a “green room,” and there is a preponderance of green used in dentists’ and doctors’ offices. A darker green would further anchor any room into a setting of tranquility.
Blue is also calming and believed to induce sleep, making it the top choice for bedrooms.
Brighter yellows are full of creativity, intellectual energy, and happiness, and makes sense for use in the kitchen when the family is gathered, sharing chores for dinner and the clean-up afterwards.
While there are still those who would choose a pastel, white or off-white for their environments, no matter what trends would indicate, it is usually during periods of transition or new beginnings, as evidenced by the fact that most apartments are rented with either pure or antique white in every room.
But I’m far from starting out. In fact, affected as anyone else by the current environment, I’ve just re-colored my family room to a darker brown and am seriously considering changing my formal dining room from its staid silver grey to tomato red.
Bill Primavera is a Westchester, NY-based realtor ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and marketing practitioner ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) who can be reached for questions or comment directly at 914-522-2076.
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