2022 Color of the Year - Green/Gray Blend

My one talent as an artist is, I have a great eye for color. I have always loved the subtle differences and frankly see most of the shades (even white which makes painting a room very challenging). The process of the choosing the Color of the Year has always fascinated me and I have written about it extensively for this Newsletter.

Normally the colors chosen by the different companies have significant variations as their mission is to select one paint chip out of more than 3,500 that somehow captures the mood of the moment—the Color of the Year. For instance, in 2021 the colors chosen shared a certain reserved optimism, but the overlap was rare. (Read Color Trends 2021 Here) For 2022, nearly all the big names chose green, from Benjamin Moore’s October Mist and Sherwin-Williams’s Evergreen Fog to Gillen's Guacamole and PPG's Olive Sprig. Why the sudden surge in the popularity of verdant hues?

The prevailing theory is that the color soothsayers all had the same experiences during the worldwide COVID lockdowns — working from home, eating outside, renewed appreciation of nature and the need to bring serenity into the home. All the colors chosen for 2022 combine soft neutrals with muted earth tones - blending hues that draw on natural elements like sea glass and floral stems. Color expert Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute describes these hues of green as “Mother Nature’s most ubiquitous neutral color, working in tandem with every other color in the spectrum."