Oh, honeysuckle!

Just moved into a new house and the all-white look has you wearing your sunglasses while you pour your morning cuppa? Perhaps you’re just ‘so over’ the neutral palette you drowned your bedroom in last year, or you’re trying to take your apartment from ‘just a flat’ to fabulous. If you crave colour and like to make a statement… Then maybe, just maybe, Honeysuckle is the splash of pastel perfection you’ve been searching for.

Whatever your decor dilemma in the month of luuurve, we suggest taking a leaf out of Pantone’s book. The yearly and seasonal colour planner for the design world’s movers and shakers, Pantone is the authority on colour and for 2011 it has chosen Honeysuckle as its colour of the year (that’s Pantone 18-2120, for those of you who never step into an upholstery shop without your encyclopedia of colour).

For those staring at the screen with a look of ‘huh?’… Honeysuckle is a shade of pink that Pantone describes as: “bright without being bold; reflecting a brighter outlook in the future, but not an ebulient one”.
It’s a nod to cautious optimism, a feeling being felt around the world. Think of it as developed countries shedding their beige raincoats in favour of a pretty cardigan in honeysuckle, because they aren’t quite ready to don a string bikini in neon pink.

It is Pantone’s job to scour the globe in search of new colours, nuances, subtle shade variations and ‘touch me’ textures… And it’s a job they take very seriously. Rest assured, when Pantone singles out a  colour, the design world pays attention.

Think you have the fashion forward guts to try the honeysuckle in your living space? Then be sure to up the cool factor by pairing pale cool pastels with deeper colours like iron and brick in your interior space, it’s this season’s ‘look’.