The two colors chosen by Pantone Institute as Color of the Year 2021 are called Ultimate Gray and Illuminating Yellow. Illuminating Yellow ( PANTONE 13-0647) is a positive and creative bright yellow conceived as a real ray of sunshine, a window open to future, Ultimate Gray (PANTONE 17-5104)and instead a strong gray, dense and refined, an intense color that represents certainty and solidity. “A combination of colors stable over time and encouraging that transmits a message of strength and hope” defines them Pantone itself, in fact they are two important shades, designed to go beyond the difficult year that has just passed and give the new year brightness and force together. Extremely different, but at the same time complementary, bright yellow and solid gray can, together, offer new combinations to be discovered. At home, then, if well mixed and balanced, they can renew and open the field to different, elegant and particular combinations. These are open and refined furnishing solutions which, depending on how the chromatic mix is ​​balanced, can be lively, when yellow prevails, or softer and more austere if gray is more evident. So let’s find out how to use the colors of 2021.How to insert the two colors in the house
The new color couple lends itself to dressing all the rooms of the house well, from the bathrooms to the bedroom, but it is probably in the living area that Illuminating Yellow and Ultimate Gray can give life to modern combinations and find their maximum expression level. Able to offer unusual chromatic games, also given by the contrasts between two so different colors, the couple allows the development of dynamic and certainly less obvious furnishing combinations. And if gray, being in this case a neutral but particularly decisive shade, will always be appropriately balanced to the type of environment you have (thus carefully evaluating floors, walls and the presence or absence of windows that give the environment the right natural light) but it can be brought into the home in many ways: as a color on the walls, for new furnishings or for textile elements, in the case of yellow, and this shade of yellow in particular, the problem is diametrically opposite. Since this is such a bright and brilliant tone, it will have to be calibrated with great accuracy and in the right way to avoid creating psychedelic situations that would tire in a short time. The advice is to use it for a single piece of furniture with essential lines or at most for a couple of small upholstered furniture, better to avoid developing it on large surfaces and above all to use it for all the walls of an environment. With what style of furniture to match them
Yellow and gray if well composed and harmonized can easily find space with different furnishing styles. Having a base that starts from an important but nevertheless neutral shade of gray, the new chromatic couple will marry well the more “masculine” styles such as industrial, modern style or new minimalism, but the luminous presence of yellow will also open up to other trends and make the mix perfect, and very chic, even with more cozy styles and with the most current variations of the Scandinavian style. Illuminating Yellow and Ultimate Gray are also two colors that, both together and distinct, lend themselves well to creating material combinations, therefore green light for combinations with traditional materials, such as ceramic or wood in the lighter essences,
The contemporary approach to colors as a “design material” allows more and more often to think about furnishing colors no longer as simple collateral variables within an environment, but as real central furnishing elements from which to start and on which to build everything else. Today, more than ever, color in the home, if used with harmony and in the right way, therefore without overdoing it, represents one of the most modern options for renovating, rethinking or building from scratch (with relatively low costs) domestic spaces. In the case of important and evocative colors, such as those chosen by Pantone for 2021, these can be an excellent starting point to “revolutionize” a space (and in this case really any type of space) and give it a contemporary connotation,
Claudia Schiera
