LibGuides: Color: Interiors & Home Products

Color - Interiors & Home Products

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Image: Claude Monet, Water Lilies from The Paris Review

OneSearch - Subject - Color in Clothing - Books
Color in Clothing - Subject Search - Library Catalog - OneSearch - Books

Pantone Color of the Year 2023

"Viva Magenta descends from the red family, and is inspired by the red of cochineal, one of the most precious dyes belonging to the natural dye family as well as one of the strongest and brightest the world has known." (Color of the year 2023: PANTONE®) Click the color swatch to see more.

Pantone Color of the Year 2023 Announcement (on Vimeo)

Pantone Color of the Year 2022

Announcing Pantone 17-3938 Very Peri

"A new Pantone Color whose courageous presence encourages personal inventiveness and creativity" (Color of the year 2022: PANTONE®) Click the color swatch to see more.

Pantone Color Of The Year From Past Years

Pantone Color of the Year 2019 - Interior Design

ANNOUNCING PANTONE 16-1546 LIVING CORAL

"Vibrant, yet mellow PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral embraces us with warmth and nourishment to provide comfort and buoyancy in our continually shifting environment." (Color of the year 2019: PANTONE®)

Color of the year 2019: PANTONE®
New York Times article: How Pantone Picked ‘Living Coral’ as the 2019 ‘Color of the Year’ By Wendy MacNaughton, 12/5/18
NPR article: Royal Hue: 'Living Coral' Crowned Color of the Year for 2019, By Colin Dwyer, 12/6/18

Web Sites: Color / Design Sources

A Color Story: by Decade
Colors and keywords for decades 1880-2000. From Your Home, Only Better.
Living Room Color Schemes from Benjamin Moore Paints
"Living room styles changed over the decades of the 20th century, shown in the 1970-era living room pictured here, which has brighter and more vibrant walls that the room from the late 1930s, also pictured." Years shown, circa: 1930, 1938, 1948, 1954, 1970, 1988
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"Here are living room color schemes depicted in Benjamin Moore decorating brochures published between 1930 and 1988. The walls in rooms shown in the various brochures got deeper and brighter as the century progressed. Nevertheless, one bit of advice remained constant. It was: "Don't be afraid to use color on your walls!""
HGTV: Decades of Color
Color Palettes Through the Decades
Take a walk back through the decades, and see how color palettes have changed and evolved over the years.

House Beautiful Archive This link opens in a new window
The archive of the US edition of House Beautiful, from its first issue in 1896 to the present.

The oldest still-published US shelter magazine, House Beautiful not only records the history of interior design, but demonstrates how broader social and cultural trends – e.g. women’s roles, family life, new technologies, and consumer behavior – have manifested themselves in domestic settings for over 125 years.
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Contains an archive starting in 1883 to 2005 for eleven magazines typically marketed to women, with high-resolution color scans and feature detailed article-level indexing. Titles and specific coverage includes:

- Better Homes & Gardens (1922 - 2005)
- Chatelaine (1928 - 2005)
- Cosmopolitan (1926 - 2004)
- Essence (1970 - 2005)
- Good Housekeeping (1885 - 2005)
- Ladies’ Home Journal (1883 - 2005)
- Parents (1926 - 2005)
- Redbook (1903 - 2005)
- Seventeen (1944 - 2005)
- Women’s Day (1937-2005)
- Women’s International Network News (WIN News) (1975-2005)

Books: Color / Design Sources

This is a very broad category of informaton. The suggested sources here might be useful when beginning your research to get a feel for the design and colors of a particular time period. The Library has many titles on decorative arts (fabrics, furniture, etc.), the individual decades of the 20th & 21st centuries, magazines and newspapers from the decades, and much more. Use OneSearch to search for specific subjects.