THE LATEST COLOR TREND IS GLOOM AND DOOM

The Craftsman style of the early 20th
century rebelled against both the
ornament and carnival-like colors
of the Victorian era. Cool and crisp
was the watchword.

The other day I was driving down a local street lined with carefully inoffensive white, beige, or gray bungalows, when something remarkable caught my peripheral vision: Blazing out from among the dreary shades was an electric blue cottage with lavender trim. While no doubt a few of the neighbors were dismayed by this violation of Waspish color preferences, the effect was both unexpected and charming. 

Colors are a mysterious thing. We all see them a little differently, and when you get right down to it, they exist as much in the mind as in the objects we perceive. Few reasonable people would argue that one color is better than another. Still, there are always folks out there who think they know best which colors are “tasteful” and which aren’t, and are anxious to let people know about it.  

Astonishing, saturated reds, greens,
and browns were a favorite during
the Art Deco period in the 1930s.
This the lobby of the Paramount
Oakland Theater, built in 1932.

In fact, color preferences are an intensely individual choice that varies from person to person and from culture to culture. Consequently, it’s nobody’s business but our own to decide which colors we like best.

A glance at the previous century’s changing color fashions shows both the human craving for variation and the relentlessly cyclical nature of taste, which has swung from reticent colors to vibrant ones and back again.  

In the United States, the opening of the twentieth century gave rise to the Craftsman era, a reaction to the kaleidoscopic palette of Victorian architecture.  Artifice was out, and natural simplicity was in. In keeping with these naturalistic aspirations, pristine whites once again returned to architecture, set off by deep, muted browns, greens, and golds.  

Now that's cheerful! The 1950s were a decade of
unmatched optimism in America's future, a fact
reflected in the ebullient colors of the era.

By the late 1920s, however, the arrival of Art Deco, with its electrifying jags-and-curves motifs, brought with it an equally dramatic shift in color tastes. Art Deco designers daringly allied black with celadon greens, icy blues, and a whole range of red and yellow ochres--a trend that lasted until the eve of World War II.  

The drab, camoflauge-like colors of the early postwar era--gray-greens, gray-blues, or ruddy browns--were surely inspired by the inescapable military imagery of the war years. A rebuke to this trend arrived in the 1950s, when light, airy pastels in pink, blue, yellow and turquoise dominated residential design. This gradual return to strong, clear colors lasted well into the 60s, culminating in the vivid psychedelic palette of the late decade.  

The ecology movement inspired the 'earth tone"
colors typical of the 1970s.

The pendulum of taste began its reversal during the Seventies, when the ecology movement helped foster a trend toward “earth tones”--a muted, naturalistic palette of beiges, tans, and browns. Despite a brief Postmodernist digression into happy neopolitan ice cream shades in the early 80s, the trend away from strong colors continued, culminating in the late-century fixation on whites, grays, and gunmetal blues. 

A taste for poisonous greens, bilious yellows, and muddy browns came to represent the first color trend of the new millenium--no doubt a sort of rebellion against the resolutely bland palette of the 80s and 90s.

And here's where we are now: What does this say
about America's current sense of self?

Alas, things have only gotten gloomier, what with the current fixation on gray, gray gray. It's a sad comment on the zeitgeist, which has been on fairly shaky ground since the Great Recession. Nowadays, in addition to houses, practically everything from cars to clothes to computers are offered in resolutely cheerless tones. A quick glance at any parking lot will tell the story—a car that isn't gray is probably black or white.

Personally, colors of gloom and doom aren’t my cup of tea. But would I dream of telling my neighbors that their newly-painted gray house wasn't “tasteful”--whatever that means?

If the guy in the electric blue house can’t make me do it, neither can they.