A Design Trend (?) I’m Surprisingly Very Into

Project 365, Day 195/365

I don’t often write about trends, mostly because well…I do not like designing around trends. Trends, of course, are important in keeping things moving, dictate what shows up in stores, in what’s accessible to us all, so I’m certainly not immune to their occasional charms. But a room full of trendy things—arches, boucle, white oak—immediately feels dated to me, hence why I rarely get into them.

However, I was texted with my buddy Jess today (Jess from EHD, as I know some of you are also readers over there) about a trend she was researching. I came to the conclusion that I recently felt blissfully unaware of anything that’s “trending” right now. This used to be my job…to know everything and anything that was in the design zeitgeist, but now, eh. If I spot something I like and see it a few times, I typically think “ah, maybe this is happening right now,” and I much prefer being in this headspace.

But yesterday, I stumbled upon this marvelous closet reveal from The Inspired Hive in which she took an old Target dresser that used to belong to her son and rehabilitated it to look like a built-in. The color she went with stopped me in my tracks:

As I went to immediately bookmark it for inspiration—well, first I frantically scrolled through the caption and comments to see if there was mention of the paint color and eventually found it…Sherwin-Williams Canyon Clay—I realized this wasn’t the first photo I saved with a similar earthy, brick red recently. One quick thumb flick through my saved folder and there it was: possibly a trend that I was very much into: red walls, accents and paint. Who woulda thunk it?

Yes, I’ve long been into terra-cotta and peach, so a deep, blood-like red is just a quick hop, skip and barely even a jump away. But it surprised me for some reason. I’ve never been much for red or reddish walls. They always felt so imposing, heavy, and while I like dramatic rooms, “heavy” is not an adjective I prefer for design.

My head was spinning last night about ways to incorporate the color into my room. Jess’ idea was to find some vintage nightstands and paint them, and I love the idea of this shade set against my pinky-peachy walls, balanced with some olive greens, warm wood tones and maybe even a pop of yellow or mustard. I put something together that I’ll show you tomorrow, but I’m finally excited again about my bedroom! Yay for progress!

Here are a few more examples of this “trending” red in action. I put “trending” in quotation marks because well, who knows if it’s actually a trend. Just because I saved a handful of images with the shade doesn’t make it a thing, but it’s a thing to me, so there you go. Listen, as a longtime design editor, I know how this works. It was our job to tell people what was a trend. Sometimes, they were obvious, trickled through the high-end market. Other times, they are things we just saw and liked, and because we said they were so, they were so. And if I wrote about it on one publication, another editor might see it, think “oh! interesting!” and write about it on another publication, and before you know it, all the publications were saying said thing was a trend. Trend forecasting is a far more intricate process than that, but I promise you, this is how it has worked for some things because I’ve seen it happen before my very eyes and sometimes, I started the rumor. Ha.

Anyhow, time for pretty photos:

This may have been one of the first rooms I bookmarked well over a year ago, designed by Julia Marcum of Chris Loves Julia. It captivated me. I remember posting it on Instagram and comparing it to the inside of a uterus but like…in a good way. Or maybe I said womb, I can’t remember nor do I want to spend time scrolling back to find out. It feels modern, inviting, comforting. I think the key here is that it’s the star, and nothing else competes with it. In fact, everything else sort of bows down to it.

This image, from Interior Define, is a similar color balance: red punctuated with wood tones, brass, cream. It’s bold, but also doesn’t feel overly in your face, which I think is what I like so much about it.

There’s almost no other word to describe this space I found on Chairish’s Instagram (by the Taiwan-based Ecru Studio) besides sexy, and trust me, I hate describing things as “sexy” but wah wah wee wah. I tend to like spaces with either a very forward sense of contrast, or almost none at all, and this one falls in the latter category mostly. Not quite an analogous palette but close to it is a color language I speak fluently.

Designer Martha Mulholland’s signature color appears to be brick red, and she uses it masterfully. It never comes off heavy-handed, overly dark or cluttered. Here, she used a House of Hackney wallpaper to bring it into this very pretty dining room that feels pretty effortless. Again, I think the key here is keeping the color palette limited.

Get my grave ready because I’m dead. Dramatic, yes, but wow this is heart-stoppingly beautiful to me. It’s the kind of space you could see in another 50 years and think “wow, that’s charming.” Thank you Workstead for bringing this to my eyeballs.

Now, this room by Studio Gian Carlo Valle is very much a “look.” It doesn’t work for everyone, or probably most, but I appreciate its boldness. It’s somehow punctuated and layered yet simple. I just love the way the light hits the subtle sheen of the paint and transforms the red into more of a rust. That’s the beauty of a color like this. It’s complex, transformative and a chameleon. Beautiful.

So that’s where I leave you. I likely will not be making any grand splashes with this brick red in my bedroom, but I am going to find a way to incorporate it if I can. I’m curious what you think?

See you tomorrow, FOAS.