Design Happens

Not to be a Grinch, but I’m relieved the holidays are over. I’m glad to go back to my normal schedule and to start thinking ahead to Valentine’s Day and even spring. This month’s color is the perfect looking-ahead color, one that embraces spring’s delicate hues, without totally giving up on the icy tones of winter. Even the name captures that it’s-still-cold-but-I’m-already-thinking-warm feeling.

What’s January’s color? Pantone’s Silver Peony.

While we always use Pantone’s color forecasts as a guide, it’s rare that we actually pick one of their exact hues (last month, for example, we went with navy; the month before that, plum). But the more our color team looked, the more of this top 10 color for 2011 we saw…and we loved it.

It’s a misleading color — is it rose? Is it beige? Is that a slight undertone of gray? Alone, it seems tame, almost invisible. But pair it with friends, and it livens up.

We saw it most often with gray and blue:

Pottery Barn’s Botanical Bedding

Or paired with greige for a hint of color:

Unison Home Twill Blanket

I love how it pops against greens of all shades, like it does in this Erinn Valencich headboard:

Is that a harbinger of spring, or what?

And notice how it stands out subtly against the winter white curtains in this coolly sophisticated living room by Ammie Kim:

If Silver Peony were a Facebook page, would you “Like” it?

P.S. Pink’s definitely on our minds this season, especially after Pantone announced Honeysuckle as their 2011 Color of the Year. Read our color guru Jeanine Hays’ take on Honeysuckle. Then let us know what you think about it, too.