3 huge colour trends for 2018

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Before analysing the big colour trends of 2018, first we’ll consider the last year. Green had its year in 2017. Not only did Pantone stamp its seal on Greenery for Colour of the Year, but a variation of the hue also won the people’s vote in GF Smith’s World’s Favourite Colour campaign. 

• How to master colour theory

2017 also saw the realisation of the impact of our impending urban future come to the fore; the UN affirmed that more than 50 per cent of us live in cities, and owing to our increased urbanisation, pollution levels became a key global concern. 

Perhaps then it is no wonder that green – the colour most synonymous with nature and the great outdoors – saw such appeal. Our environments, both work and play, have become awash with greenery, from the cultivation of house plants, window boxes and mini-ecosystems, to allotments, pop-up green oases and even vast vertical gardens.  

The biophilia hypothesis

Designers and architects are increasingly buying into the biophilia hypothesis – which states that as humans, we have an inherent need to connect with greenery and the natural world – and are ‘designing-in’ nature to new spaces more and more. 

Boutique houseplant stores and city conservatories have gained high design status, while accounts from the likes of plant-loving photographers Haarkon attract hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram.

The Haarkon Instagram account is bursting with plant photography

While the grassy shade of Pantone’s Greenery may not have filtered into commercial design on a mass-market level, related green tones and shades have become firmly established across specialisms. 

Khaki has affirmed itself a staple shade akin to navy and black, prolific in fashion, while more exotic tones of jade and forest green are combined with rose and warm metals for a luxury aesthetic.  

 Pantone Colour of the Year with Airbnb

GF Smith’s World’s Favourite Colour campaign invited people to engage with an interactive website in order to finely tune and select their personal favourite colour from a seemingly infinite spectrum. The colours submitted were analysed to pinpoint ‘the world’s favourite’ and ultimately saw Annie Marrs’ teal-esque green initiated into the paper manufacturer’s Colourplan range.  

Luxurious greens

Last year, we predicted the onset of an Engineered Nature palette, in which organic shades work in synergy with scientifically manipulated synthetic greens. As we enter 2018, we are seeing shades of green in design expand beyond the expected. 

What began as the pursuit for a greater connection with nature – with organic greens infused into spaces and products – has evolved into more luxurious uses of green, engineered nature and the emergence of Art Deco and tropical luxe-inspired palettes.

The Broadview Hotel by Blok

Over the next few pages, we provide you with the key colour trends for 2018, with the insights driving these palettes. At FranklinTill we don’t believe in reporting flash-in-the-pan seasonal trends. Trends don’t simply disappear, but movements gather momentum and colour palettes evolve, manifesting in different ways as they move from the periphery towards the mainstream. Neither do we believe in mimicking great design in an attempt to be ‘on trend’. 

We aim to draw attention to the people behind emerging design movements and celebrate their creativity. So read on to discover three such movements, and the palettes that reflect them...

Next page: 3 huge colour trends to know for 2018

01. Interactive

The way we interact with colour is changing. We live in a digital reality in which hyperreal and digital-real aesthetics are so ubiquitous that we often can’t tell the difference between synthetically generated and real imagery. 

Realer-than-real effects, once the dominion of Hollywood editing suites, have been democratised through the advancements of CAD technologies so that creatives in wider areas can exploit the possibilities of boundless digital creation, often to a highly experimental degree. 

These designers are creating New Age aesthetics. This look and feel suggests boundless movement and is being increasingly adopted by design in the physical world, as product packaging and communication lean towards this idea of an alternative real aesthetic. 

One of the new wave of artists and designers exploring the digital aesthetic is Lucy Hardcastle, whose work regularly interrogates the relationship between digital and real-world design. 

 Glow by Lucy Hardcastle 

Glow, a collection of abstract, rendered images and objects, uses high-gloss and reflective surfaces, with textures of silk and velvet, to ground the work. Hardcastle describes her palette as “emotive, and atmospheric”, using “millennial” pastels contrasted with strong colour.

We are so used to colour being dynamic, fluid and interactive in our screen-based experiences that we are now demanding the same qualities from physical tangible colour. 

Optical effects

A host of product and spatial designers are reprieving the aesthetics of the light and space movement of the ’60s and creating optical effects through reflection, refraction and light dispersion in order to transform environments. 

Artists are experimenting with various materials and colour compositions to subvert perceptions of surface and space through use of clever, sensitive colour and light applications. A new generation of designers is picking up the mantle of established light artists, such as Larry Bell and DeWain Valentine, to reinterpret the experimental art movement in tangible forms. 

Echoing the principles of the light and space movement, Sabine Marcelis examines how far she can push the relationship between light and materiality.

The concept for the interior design of Salle Privee’s House no. 8 in Milan Italy, by Sabine Marcelis, revolves around extruding shapes from the single existing central mirrored wall

The Rotterdam-based designer uses light as a tool to transform. Mutating the presumed aesthetic characteristics of materials such as glass, mirror and metal, Marcelis’ pieces disrupt paths of light through opaque matter and form tinted reflections.

The Curved Twist screen by Kia Utzon-Frank, in collaboration with Fay McCaul, incorporates 21,500 dichroic rods that have been knitted into the screen in order to create a colour-changing effect. The perceived colour of the screen is unpredictable and totally dependent on the quality of light and the angle of the viewer.  

The idea that colour should move is influencing graphic design and visual communication, by way of iridescence and special treatments. Designers are making smart use of special finishes and foil to bring ethereal movement to printed work. 

Holographic and iridescent special foils mimic in print the effects achieved by product designers using glass reflective surfaces as well as the fluid gloss quality of hyperreal digital colour. An otherworldly palette synthesises the ephemeral quality of coloured light and is combined with hyperreal pastels. 

Next page: More big colour trends for 2018

02. Primitive

Last year, we presented a colour story titled Material Reveal. This was a celebration of the organic beauty of unadulterated natural materials and was driven by a backlash against industrial, mass produced design in a homogenised minimalist aesthetic. 

This shift towards crafted material colour is showing no signs of disappearing, but the muddy earthen brown hues have evolved into saturated terracotta and burnt sienna shades.

Designers are reinitiating intimate connections to tactile materials, products and spaces, embracing a creative regression. They are devolving fabrication techniques in order to reconnect with matter and craftsmanship. 

 Petra Lilja for Swedish Ninja

The imprints of techniques and processes are embedded in the aesthetic outcomes of new crafted products as designers employ slow, laborious methods and allow material origins to dictate final outcomes. Surfaces are rough-hewn and natural, appealing to a desire for tactile reconnection. 

Celebrating terracotta 

The imperfect finishes bear testament to the considered creation of each item and the respect of new craftspeople for traditional techniques. With a focus on materiality, surfaces display respectful manipulations that retain natural aesthetic qualities in honest material colours. 

Rich earth tones, clay browns and nude have a grounding effect on the user, evoking a reassuring connection to organic matter. 

Terracotta is becoming a key material of the moment. The functional unpretentious earthenware is being celebrated for its natural orange hue, in marked contrast to more purist ceramic materials. Primitive resources suggest longevity and rough-hewn, hand-worked surfaces are respected for their honest imperfections. 

In a true act of colour activism, sculptor Carl Emil Jacobsen created the Powder Variations series. Dissatisfied with the mass produced standardised pigments of stoneware glaze, Jacobsen looked to his environment to create various native pigments. 

Powder Variations, by Carl Emil Jacobsen. Photography by

Collecting fieldstones, tiles and bricks from his local landscape in Denmark, he crushed and ground the materials to create bespoke pigments with a truly local narrative.

These vibrant earthen shades are even finding a place in the world of luxury fashion. The Bureau Betak design catwalk setting for Ermenegildo Zegna’s spring/summer 2018 show saw a blanket of striking burnt orange sand coat the ground, punctuated by reflective geometric plinths. 

In graphic design, illustration and packaging fibrous papers allow the material to do the talking. They add texture to colour in printed material. Paper derived from unorthodox origins, waste food, such as coffee grounds or spent hops, for example, suggest and celebrate sustainable alternatives through the use of inherent natural aesthetics. 

Next page: More big colour trends for 2018

03. Playful 

As an antidote to everyday mundane stresses and pressures, we are finding release in regression, replacing highbrow pursuits with honest and innocent play and reverting to childlike experimentation and inquiry.

Our increasingly urban environments are witnessing a transformation as shared city spaces are reinvented as convivial play spaces both literally and metaphorically. 

The city is no longer a drab grey industrial landscape of concrete, metal and motors, redolent of utility and business. Instead it is a vibrant, energetic, constantly evolving entity – a sensory landscape that is inspiring a refreshed playful approach across design categories from visual communication to fashion and interiors. 

Designers are rediscovering the creative and intellectual value of play, remembering that the act of play is itself a learning experience and route to creation. We are seeing a reappreciation for playfulness and happy accidents as designers embrace naive experimentation in their practice. Bold and defiant designs of product, space, visual communication and fashion are injected with a sense of humour. 

Return of the Memphis Group aesthetic

The Memphis Group’s aesthetic is experiencing a renaissance, reinterpreted in alternative scales and applications. Monochrome patterns are juxtaposed with block brights in geometric and irregular configurations. 

Stereotypical spaces and product designs are adopting saturated colour palettes and abstract forms that challenge us to invent and imagine, to draw up our own narratives and lose ourselves in simple intuitive interaction.

Described as a ‘temple of wonder’, Camille Walala’s Now Gallery installation is a labyrinth of colour and pattern, encouraging visitors to “be more aware of their bodies, engage their minds and give themselves over to play”.

 Walala X Play by Camille Walala for the Now Gallery 

In honour of Centre Pompidou’s 40th anniversary, surrealist designer studio GGSV has created a fantastical interactive playground. The Paris-based duo took inspiration from the likes of René Magritte, Ettore Sottsass and Gaetano Pesce to design Galerie Party, a garden of distorted forms at exaggerated scales, with prints and colours that bombard the senses. 

 Galerie Party by Studio GGSV

The multitude of playscape elements invites assembly and reconfiguration, suggesting multiple composition possibilities and highlighting the role of play in self-expression.

The pieces in avant-garde designer Henrik Vibskov’s spring/summer 2018 collection are adorned with cartoonish motifs. Knit jacquards depict ambiguous caricatured creatures and facial features while a neutral peach palette is punctuated by flashes of bright primaries. 

 Henrik Vibskov S/S 2018. Photography by Victor Jones

In graphic design, illustration and packaging, clashing brights are applied in stripes, spots and abstract shapes that jigsaw across surfaces. Plasticised finishes and spot gloss varnishes are applied to flat graphics and figurative forms take a surrealist lilt. 

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