Inspiration
Colour Insider
The latest news from our Dulux colour experts on colour, paint, design, trends and events.
Dulux Colour Trends 2018
Balance
For more than 18 years the Dulux Colour Team has been exploring progressive Colour Trends from around the world. In September, Dulux will launch Colour Trends 2018: Balance. Balance is desired in many areas of life, whether it be in a professional capacity, family harmony and lifestyle or within one's self. With future interiors in mind, the idea of balance is crucial to ensure we live and work in harmonious spaces that help to stimulate our senses, as well as enabling us to relax and retreat. Colour is a wonderful way to express your personal tastes and desires.
Here is a sneak peek of what you can expect to see from the four trends of 2018.
Kinship
It's time to create space for compassion and kindness, truth and transparency. In doing so we find new joy in reviving long-held traditions and cultural influences ignite our sense of community and kinship.
Essential
Our search for a more authentic existence inspires a new-found appreciation for natural and recycled materials. As we embrace the old as new, we repair our rifts with nature and move towards a more genuine and conscious way of living.
Escapade
Everybody is a global citizen and dream destinations are just a plane ride away. Adventure and discovery hover on the horizon and paradise awaits – both on our earthly shores and to the stars and beyond.
Reflect
The age of intelligence may be upon us, but our romance with the past lives on. As smart technology re-shapes the look and feel of our everyday life, we take the opportunity to reflect and re-connect with the design icons of our past.
The Milan Report
Our Dulux colour experts along with independent trend forecasters attend Milan Design Week and the furniture fair Salone Del Mobile each year to gather key insights, inspiration and influencing factors that will affect Australian and New Zealand interiors over the coming years. Here we share with you the top 5 trends the Dulux team documented during their visit, which will help to create our next Dulux Colour Trends for 2018 to inspire you in your own home.
Colour Insider Gallery
Pink Generation
Millennial pink has had a huge influence over colour palettes. Pink in all its varying hues was seen throughout the fair, often used in beautiful tonal palettes ranging from soft porcelain to deep wine colours.
Bring the trend into your home: Choose a pink that suits you, cool and ‘poppy’ or warm and relaxed. Add a little in accessories or create a tonal palette of warm hues.
Curvaceous Lines
Curves, circles and ovals were a repetitive feature in furniture, accessories and architectural details in temporary installations. Furniture shapes were comfortable organic forms or curved to create half circles.
Bring the trend into your home: Choose soft rounded organic shapes in furniture pieces or consider accessories such as round mirrors, artwork, cushions and rugs.
Simple Geometry
Throughout Milan Design Week there was a repetition of diagonal lines and stripes as well as simple grid patterns. Used as a feature on walls or on furniture as a pattern, it was seen as bold and contrasting or subtle tone on tone.
Bring the trend into your home: With a bold geometric paint feature on your wall or on a furniture piece.
Second time around
There is a trend towards creating new recycled or upcycled materials. Designers and manufacturers are collaborating, looking at how they can use 'circular' production processes, aiming to reduce waste while still making quality, affordable products.
Bring the trend into your home: By buying furniture and textiles that are created from waste, byproduct, recycled or upcycled materials.
Perfectly imperfect
Embracing imperfections and a return to handmade was a key trend this year. There is irregularity, asymmetry and an unpolished beauty in natural materials - they share a certain bespoke quality that makes them interesting and unique.
Bring the trend into your home: With a textured wall which is applied in an organic pattern rather than in a uniformed way.
Colour Planning and Communications Manager for Dulux Group, Andrea Lucena-Orr researches colour trends presenting her findings to trade and retail markets, along with media. Travelling to Milan Design Week, Andrea and Bree Leech solidify their initial ideas to create the trends for the following year. “I adore working with colour – it has the power to transform products and spaces and is integral in evoking emotion”.
Bree Leech is the creative director behind the Dulux Colour Forecast. Collaborating closely with Dulux trend forecaster Andrea Lucena-Orr to create the trends she also produces and styles the images, Bree Leech's extensive experience in the design industry helps shape the Dulux trends each year. "Colour trends are intriguing and often complex, I love being able to bring them to life in imagery that is both beautiful and tells a story."
Davina is the Colour and Design Specialist at Dulux NZ, responsible for the New Zealand colour strategy. She has a background in marketing and studied interior design at Te Tuhi. She is currently completing a Diploma of Colour Design at ISDC. This was her second trip to Salone del Mobile in Milan. "I love how colour and colour combinations are constantly evolving and how closely influenced they are by what is happening in society as a whole."
Disclaimer
Colours displayed should be used as a guide for your colour selection. To ensure best accuracy, test your colour choice at home by ordering Dulux sample pots, stickers and A4 colour swatches.