What's the 'paint colour of the year'? Pastel blue

By Brynna Leslie

Forget Fifty Shades of Grey, that the new neutral is – wait for it – pastel blue!

Believe it or not, pastels are back. And you may start to see customers demanding pastel shades over more traditional greys and beiges as we head into the New Year.

While it may seem like a flashback to the late eighties, these things are cyclical. Benjamin Moore, for one, released its Colour of the Year 2014 in early October, what it describes as an “ethereal blue” called “Breath of Fresh Air.”

The company claims it’s not so much setting a trend as reflecting pastel shades already out there out there – in pop culture, furniture and fashion.

Certainly, a quick glance at the recently-held New York Fashion Week would suggest Benjamin Moore is onto something. The runways were teeming with the pastel hues – pinks, greens and blues — mixed with deeper accent shades that are covered in the company’s 2014 colour trends collection.

Benjamin Moore’s palette includes all the pastels fit to paint, with names like Lavender Mist, Peach Parfait and Iced Mauve. But there are also some bold accent colours, including Black Satin (self-explanatory), Super Nova (resembling the outer skin of an eggplant) and Van Deusen Blue (which, to the untrained eye, looks like slate).

For those who really like to keep the walls plain as a parcel package, the 23-colour collection also includes some true neutrals, like Clay Beige and Wickham Gray.

The 2014 colour trends collection represents the latest in Benjamin Moore’s collection of 3,500 colours. Who knew there were so many?

It’s worth keeping this little tidbit of information in your back pocket, in case you have a customer who wants to “go neutral” in 2014, but doesn’t know what that means. You can see Benjamin Moore’s 2014 Colour Trends Collection here.