Navigating Colour Trends: 5 Tips from a Home & Interiors Trend Expert

As a designer in the housewares and interior industry, you understand that the home is more than just a space—it’s a sanctuary. Every product you introduce into the home of your consumer has the potential to provide comfort and practicality or evoke joy. Colour trends play a pivotal role in shaping these environments delivering experiences that calm, inspire, and delight householders. 

Navigating colour trends is rewarding work. However, finding the right balance between longevity and novelty, or driving distinction and achieving broad commercial appeal can be complex and challenging.

With up to 90% of purchase decisions influenced by colour, it is crucial to predict future consumer attitudes and preferences accurately.

Exploring TrendBible’s unique colour philosophy, Naomi Pollard, our Director of Trend Services, shares 5 expert tips on how to leverage the colour trends within our seasonal forecasts to craft compelling products and experiences that will resonate with your future consumers:

• Why forecasting colour trends for the home requires a uniquely different strategy from fashion forecasting

• How to select colour trends that are rooted in psychology 

• Identifying the essential colours for the season across multi-product categories

• Ensuring colour ‘Layerability’ for longer-lasting, sustainable design

• How to innovate through colour combinations

1. Why forecasting colour trends for the home is a uniquely different strategy from fashion forecasting 

As a leading authority on the future of life at home, at TrendBible we know that householders choices are influenced by a very specific set of circumstances. We forecast what’s next using research models specially designed to identify new behaviours and taste shifts at home and in family life, rather than relying on models created for other very different consumer industries like fashion or beauty. As a result, our colour trend strategy provides clear direction, confidence and longevity for designers in the home and interior industry. 

2. How to select colour trends that are rooted in psychology  

Colour is a deeply emotional and symbolic design tool. Our forecast methodology begins with intelligence gathering; using a blend of visual research alongside social and cultural analysis. This two-pronged approach ensures palettes not only reflect what we see happening in the emerging design landscape around us but also the key emotional triggers for future consumers.  

 Our team of colour experts and psychologists look at hue, depth, vibrancy and colour balance to create the right levels of excitement and energy, calming harmony or surprise as required by the mood we’ve identified for each trend.  

3. Identifying the essential colours for the season across multi-product categories

While highlighting a ‘colour of the year’ provides excellent marketing opportunities and can be used to spotlight a shade or group of colours which have significant appeal, we know it’s impossible to say that a single shade is going to be successful across every category.  

That’s why we choose not one but six key colours for the season ahead. These colours are essential for designers working in categories with limited colour opportunities, and help to update products where colour nuance has a huge impact; like home appliances, upholstery or tiles.  

 Each colour has been chosen because of its overarching importance for the season, and the breadth of six shades caters to different markets, categories or materials. Some work beautifully in textiles, while other nuances are better for wall paint and ceramics, glass or even packaging.   

4. Ensuring colour ‘Layerability’ for longer-lasting, sustainable design 

Another important consideration within our colour trend forecasting process is the ‘layerability’ of colour. Unlike fashion or beauty, products purchased for the home tend to sit alongside products from previous seasons, if not decades for some customers.    

Colour trends can take years to fully come and go in the home; think about the influence of grey, or blush pink for instance. For this reason, we don’t introduce new colours unnecessarily. You will sometimes find a key shade from one season appearing in the following season and we always consider the blending of colours from one season to the next. This has practical, economic and sustainability benefits, making it easier to cross-match stock from the previous season for visual merchandising and to reduce unnecessary lab dips or sampling. It also makes the shopping experience easier and more enjoyable for customers who can build upon the colour palette they have invested in already.

5. How to innovate through colour combinations

Finally, it’s essential to explore colour, not in isolation, but alongside the other shades in the palette. Does the trend require contrast or harmony? Depth or lightness? Colour combinations have huge power and new contrast-partners can bring freshness to existing colours. A mauve which may have sat alongside tonal blues and purples in a previous season, takes on a completely different feel when contrasted with an olive green for instance. 

 Our colour usage guidance shows how the colours in the palette can be combined in different groupings to change the overall feel of the trend. This is especially helpful if you want to explore a single trend across both traditional and directional product assortments or younger and older consumer groups. 

 Stay informed with trend direction for every season with insights from our home and interior colour experts  

Available as part of My TrendBible our Premium Trend Subscription, our seasonal trend forecasts provide a concise edit of the newest, most innovative trends for the future of home and family life. 

Featuring four unique stories every season, each trend provides clear direction on shape, material, print, pattern and colour (PANTONE® referenced) to unlock creativity and fire the imagination. Each trend in our forecast comes with guidance on how to break the broader colour palettes into impactful combinations of 2-5 colours for double-sided or colour-blocked items, print designs or when planning a collection of objects.