2009 christmas color trends

[RWK]

Since regional markets differ.......What are some of the color combinations/trends you are selling/carrying/seeing in your areas?

Most of you know that I am now working with a home decor/permanent botanical store......and the themes we are working with this year for Christmas are.....

"Chocolate Cherry" - Cherry reds combined with browns, golds, and copper colors

"Silver snow" - Silver and Indigo blue on white

"Red Red" - Exploring the whole range of red shades, tints, and tones with highlights of gold

"Red and Lime" - combining the brighter reds with the chartreuse,emerald, and lime greens

There are of course the more traditional standard colors as well.

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What colors/trends are you seeing in your markets?

 

[Seasonals]

Personally you can decide what you think the trend will be and run with that, BUT you will lose sales if your are not flexible enough to have all the color combos you mentioned. When I've tried to go with what the "trend" indicated, I was always ahead of the trend for our area.

I save myself alot of anguish now by having some of everything and making it work for the customer's trend.

 

[Carrieann]

Can't wait to see responses on this. Our area is sooo behind the times it's not funny. Another designer and myself always joke that we are going to move somewhere that we are appreciated.

Up here it is traditional red and green, adirondack style (we are in the adirondacks) or white (but not much white, those people think they are being modern)

 

[concord]

We have a very traditional clientel but the shades of reds seemed popular as well as some lime green red combos last xmas. We are usually a year or even two years behind what the trends are so we start with a new idea on a small scale and increase it over two years and then it fades out again.

 

[NicoleAtTF]

I can't speak for Teleflora as I'm not on product side enough to know, but I can say I found something interesting via Twitter the other day for color trends. Pantone releases a document outlining color trends on a bi-annual or quarterly basis and it looks at colors in fashion. May be helpful? Look on the lower left of the website in the 'trends' section for the articles they write on color trends.

 

[villageflowerlady]

Very small town and very traditional here. I do one display that is very modern but tend to sell the traditional. If I sell from the "fun one" great but with holiday decor being up so long I like to have something I like to see

 

[sandytf]

We are in conservative northern Wisconsin so traditional rules! Red, red, and more red! Oh, and woodsy, woodsy, and more woodsy! It gets hard to come up with a new twist on the lodge look each year-we have done vintage lodge, cozy cabin, mountain lodge, etc. etc.

Our themes for this year?

Traditional red, burgundy, and gold with a more botanical twist.

Bronze, greens, and ivories with natural twist (nests, snowflakes, birds, etc)

Old fashioned Christmas with lots of plaids, snowmen, the big old-fashioned christmas lights, tinsel, etc.

Also, snowmen outsell Santa about 6 to 1 for us.

I think people are still going to want a more safe, traditional look yet this year. Look to next year for some risk taking.

FTR, I think the Pantone stuff is is really abstract. I never could relate to their color groupings and what it was all supposed to mean. It sure never translates into what our customers are looking for.

 

[terri]

We carry the full gamut of color combos, but if history proves right, during "bad times" the consumer generally looks for tradition, so, 60% of our product this year will probably reflect this

 

[RWK]

......I should have specified......the store I am working for is part of a chain and the color combos/themes this year is what we have been instructed to use......How we interpret those themes and adapt them is where we are to differ from other stores in the chain.

 

[sandytf]

Are you allowed to do "Christmas" with a religious theme? Or is it just "holiday"?

I would make the Chocolate and Cherry very funky and fun-but sophisticated.

I would make the silver, white and indigo a star theme if you have them.

I would make the red shades the traditional look.

I would make the red, chartruese, emerald whimsical and a little childlike.

BTW-I think the chartreuse green is here to stay for awhile. It really updates the traditional green and red and gives it that "pop".

Ricky-You must take pics of the showroom/store and let us see what you are working with! I could drool just thinking of it.

 

[RWK]

I am going to find out tommorrow if they allow us employees to photograph work - both in progress and in completion. hopefully, they will.

I do know that we are sent all the items selcted by corporate to go on the trees and then we augment that with products in store.

The silver, white, blue scheme is the one admittedly I am the least thrilled about......it is to go on a white tree......perhaps I will feel differently when we get the material in that is earmarked for that scheme.

 

[elmo]

Chartruse is a great mover in my shop. Love it in candles with silver holders.
Shoppers like when their shown how to introduce a touch of new to work with what they have already invested in last year. Had a lady come in and buy one of my trees with everything on it last year! Wrapped it in a tarp and took it out with a 150.00 wreath to match. I hope she changes her design for Christmas this year. In my small town this doesn't happen often. Called my husband had to tell him, he didn't seem to be jumping in the air as I was, ask me "Well didn't you have it for sale?" Just killed my joy, till I had the money in hand.
Ricky, you keep us in tune to whats hitting the market my friend. So glad you'll liking your job.

 

[Tuberose]

I think the blue scheme is a beautiful coloring, but it has never sold well up here, maybe because it isn't cozy? I'm with everyone else in that red and traditional will be the thing, people want that secure feeling after what the economy has been through.

I've always loved mixing reds and glitter and ribbon and diff colors of red ornaments in a centerpiece, saw it done by J at a design show and it has sold well every store I have made them at.

We have several things going on close to the time we would normally start Christmas silks, so we will be working our butts off the week before Open House, I'll know then exactly what we will be doing.

trish

 

[CHR]

Terri -

I totally agree. In stressful times, most people choose traditional colors as a reassuring level of comfort. We can always look back and feel good.

The edgier stuff (especially colors) gains popularity in more stable economic times. Plus, older stuff can be reused or re-purposed. A new color palette requires a total overhaul.

The addition of chartreuse, black, chocolate or copper can always give older traditional stuff a fresher look.

 

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Since regional markets differ.......What are some of the color combinations/trends you are selling/carrying/seeing in your areas?

Most of you know that I am now working with a home decor/permanent botanical store......and the themes we are working with this year for Christmas are.....

"Chocolate Cherry" - Cherry reds combined with browns, golds, and copper colors

"Silver snow" - Silver and Indigo blue on white

"Red Red" - Exploring the whole range of red shades, tints, and tones with highlights of gold

"Red and Lime" - combining the brighter reds with the chartreuse,emerald, and lime greens

There are of course the more traditional standard colors as well.

---------------------------------

What colors/trends are you seeing in your markets?

Speaking from a different location - we are located inside a Casino so our trends seem to be more on the modern contempo side. We tend to use rich out of the norm colors for holidays - this year we are looking at Sea themed colors which were finding out can incompass a broad spectrum!

 

[NPFloral]

Here in Trailer-Granny land, it had better be red-white-green or it gets returned. I remember a fab centerpiece last year I made all chartreus green & chocolate. The old biddy that received it broght it back, called in "gross" and exchanged it for a simple r/w/g carnation centerpiece with single taper.

Wish I could do the new and the funky but....

Tim - North Port Floral

 

[Rhonda]

Here in Trailer-Granny land, it had better be red-white-green or it gets returned. I remember a fab centerpiece last year I made all chartreus green & chocolate. The old biddy that received it broght it back, called in "gross" and exchanged it for a simple r/w/g carnation centerpiece with single taper.

Wish I could do the new and the funky but....

Tim - North Port Floral

Oh, that is so here, too. Just a few younger gen that appreciate trends.

 

[Tuberose]

We're fortunate to have some of our clientele be trendy, let's us do some unique things, but we still have to keep the red and green pieces in plenty because we sell those too. We don't have and red and white silk carnations, so I get off the hook that way! I have a Santa customer in Carmel, he only wants the Santas done in red and green, he's a small shop and he wants to be safe and be able to sell it.

Trish

 

[TGDragonfly]

We have a Christmas home tour in DC called the St Alban's Christmas Tour. It's a neighborhood of stately Victorian homes close to the National Cathedral. What's fun about this is that it's purely a designer's choice. Last year as a designer I transformed a jewish clients home with all copper. Sort of modern, everything sprayed copper. The monochromatic look I felt made it, simply because the house had a modern look with a copper aura.

This year I will be working on a house with a old soul, lots of cool tones, feels like a Grandmother ghost is there. My new personal color this year is robin egg blue. So with this look I will be designing and pairing the blue with sepia shades. I am creating lots of paper ornaments with scenes of lore and yesteryear that I will be shading in sepia tones. Instead of traditional evergreens I will be using dyed brown preserved foliages, and Dustymiller. The Robinegg Blue will be brought in using some metal bells I found that I will distress.

This is my pallet choice: Sepia browns, silver, Robin Egg blue. Hey, we set our own trends right?

 

[sandytf]

We have a Christmas home tour in DC called the St Alban's Christmas Tour. It's a neighborhood of stately Victorian homes close to the National Cathedral. What's fun about this is that it's purely a designer's choice. Last year as a designer I transformed a jewish clients home with all copper. Sort of modern, everything sprayed copper. The monochromatic look I felt made it, simply because the house had a modern look with a copper aura.

This year I will be working on a house with a old soul, lots of cool tones, feels like a Grandmother ghost is there. My new personal color this year is robin egg blue. So with this look I will be designing and pairing the blue with sepia shades. I am creating lots of paper ornaments with scenes of lore and yesteryear that I will be shading in sepia tones. Instead of traditional evergreens I will be using dyed brown preserved foliages, and Dustymiller. The Robinegg Blue will be brought in using some metal bells I found that I will distress.

This is my pallet choice: Sepia browns, silver, Robin Egg blue. Hey, we set our own trends right?

Thom,

The situation you refer to is a perfect time to show something non-traditional. We also do a tour of homes and we usually try to do a different color palette. Mostly, we make it fit in with the home (and a lot of them are very rustic in the Northwoods of WI-even the very high end homes). Last year we had a more rustic home with a lot of natural stone, granite, wood, etc. so we used coppers, chartreuse, and bronze. It turned out really nice. I think those are the times when we HAVE to show something different or we look uncreative. However, it's not what we would normally SELL. It's a balancing act between showing the trends and creativity and having what people will pay cold, hard cash for.

When we show the traditional colors, we usually try to get creative with product and use it in a new, unconventional way. We have done an upside down tree for years, but we still have people make comments and think it's really "different". That's one way to show our customers how we are creative without losing that "traditional" look.

Lucky we're good at this, huh?