Dulux Trade Colour Futures 2017

September 16, 2016

Dulux Trade Colour Futures 2017

You may not know it yet, but the colours you might want to put on your walls next year have already been decided. A team of trend forecasters, as well as design experts, have been confined in a laboratory in Amsterdam carefully analysing our social media trends and economic trends to come with shades that we might want in 2017. It is the responsibility of the team to read and learn what customers desire, even before the customer realises it.

At an event hosted on 7th September 2017, the Akzo Nobel team, which owns Dulux Trade, and their trusted advisors – a Chinese architect, a Polish design expert and a trend specialist from Latin America, unveiled the 2017 palette.

Denim Drift, which is a greyed out shade of blue, was crowned as the colour of the year. The team described this colour as beautiful and timeless just like denim that has been around for years and still is fashionable and trendy. This colour features a spectrum of blues and blue-hue tones and was selected as one of the colour trends for 2017 by the professionals in the Dulux Global Aesthetic Centre (DGAC).

Denim Drift is part of a new palette of 45 dissimilar colours created around four lifestyle trends that show what the world is all about at the moment. The colour is about sustainability, sharing romanticism and bringing nature into the urban world.

This palette has been based on another trend called Shared individualism. This trend was introduced by the Chinese architect who talked about the Best Economy, which is a huge trend in Asia. This trend is about meeting different people and socialising online on various social media platforms and then coming together in real life.

Another trend that emerged at the launch was about how our workplaces are becoming more like our homes and our homes becoming like small offices. A lot of people today are working from homes and they carry their personal computers to and from work. The trend aims at making our homes a better place where we can work and live in.

Louise Tod from DGAC explains that the overriding colour theme reflects the progressively digital world where authentic experiences are becoming more important than ever. She stated that as the world changes, more and more people are looking at the everyday elements of life from a completely different angle. People are trying to connect the daily experiences with nature and all these are expressed in the 2017 colour trends.

The event took place in a big townhouse in central London, which was completely transformed using the 2017 colours.