Color Trends for Custom Homes

What’s the hot new color? What’s the latest trend in home products and interiors? As a custom builder or designer, you hear these questions constantly. As you know, having the right answers for your clients can translate into quicker sales and more satisfied buyers. Knowing what is hot in the marketplace will set you apart from your competitors.

The one true font of knowledge on this subject is an organization called Color Marketing Group, the international organization that forecasts and tracks color trends. Its purpose is summed up in its tag line: Color sells and the right color sells better.

Twice a year, this group, made up of color professionals from major manufacturers from cars to carpets as well as hundreds of independent color consultants and educators, meets to assess the major trends in the marketplace and the effect of those trends on colors.

Popular colors and finishes are not pulled out of a hat. Rather, they directly reflect the pulse of the people buying them; how they feel emotionally, how positive or negative their feelings are about the economy, and how they feel about their lives in general. For many years, CMG noted how the stress of everyday life affects what people look for in products in terms of their color and how those colors make them feel.

All of us are stressed today by faxes, pagers, cell phones, e-mails, road rage, soccer games and more, so when we finally come home all we want to do is shut the doors, lock out the world, sit in front of the TV and call out for food. CMG members recognize this trend, often referred to as cocooning, as a long-standing driver of consumer choices. You’ve seen the effect of this trend in the prevalence of muted comfort colors, soft relaxed fabrics, overstuffed leather chairs, and other elements in the home that make us feel relaxed and sheltered from the stress of outside life.

The prevalence today of brick and stone exteriors, traditional and historic house forms, tile and articulated asphalt roofs, are responses to the desires of homeowners to have a house that feels solid, timeless and protective. Color trends for building exteriors are driven by the need to blend with and show off these materials to their best advantage.

Darker, richer home colors are now in high demand, and the trend will continue as the public at large remains completely unmoved by the beige homes that have proliferated for years and years. Strong but not overbearing colors are big now and will be in high demand as people continue to design homes with a sense of individuality tempered by good taste.

Our customized lives

Probably the biggest trend discussed within CMG is the proliferation of customization in the marketplace in every product from iPods to cars to home decor. This, of course is great news for the custom builder or designer, who couldn’t be better positioned to make the most of this trend.

Take for example the highly successful Mini Cooper automobile. Buyers can not only choose the upgrades they want on their car, but can actually name it and track its progress through the manufacturing process. Both the Gen-X and Boomer generations have taken to customization in a big way. No one is happy with out-of-the-box products anymore.

Another huge trend that CMG’ers report is the public’s concern with the environment. Globalization has given all of us a new realization that what one country does affects the entire world. We see whole species and open spaces vanishing before our eyes. This has given rise to a new respect for nature and an attendant rise in the desire to have natural elements in our lives.

Green building is a trend that is gaining momentum like a freight train. Natural materials used as both decorative elements and building materials are in high demand. Cost-effective, well-insulated buildings now come standard. Products made from renewable resources are well received and even demanded by buyers. CMG members involved with flooring talk about the new interest in materials such as cork, bamboo and tile flooring which combine not only the “natural” moniker but are also customizable, being offered in myriad colors and finishes.