According to Benjamin Moore's expert Doty Horn there are four main color trends for 2009.
Raw: Horn says this palette comes from the push toward minimalism, pairing life down to its most authentic. This palette is derived from unfinished wood, cinder blocks and other "make-do" materials. It includes shades of white, sand and gray. The room above features three of the colors in the "Raw" palette: Tucson Winds on the walls, Mascarpone on the trim and Hush on the ceiling.
2. This is the same room finished in the second of the colour palettes by Benjamin Moore - Urban Silence. In this colour palette Horn said this group of colors reflects the changing delineation between life in the city and life outside the city. "This is where the trees become houses and the houses become trees," she explained. As more urban buildings incorporate rooftop gardens and shipping containers are converted into living spaces, the city becomes a softer, more livable place. This palette reflects these changes by mixing the gray tones of urban living with vibrant, organic colors like green, rust and terra cotta.
The room above features three of the colors in the "Urban Silence" palette: Shadow Gray on the walls, Wasabi as the trim and Lapland on the ceiling.
3. Simplexity is the third in the series by Benjamin Moore. To understand this color palette, think about the pixels that make up a computer screen: thousands of tiny dots in different shades that come together to make a whole. These are colors that have more to them than meets the eye.
"The colors here are very complex, they have a lot of depth to them, but they're easy to use, so that's the simplicity part of that," Horn says. For example, she said, think of a color that looks black, but it's really purple. "It's almost black but it has an undercurrent of blue and red running underneath it and it just has a rich texture and a rich landscape, and the way that the light hits it, you start seeing the nuances of how those colors flip underneath it."
The room above features three of the colors in the "Simplexity" palette: Thunder on the walls, Meditation on the trim and Amsterdam on the ceiling.
This room features three of the colors in the "Private Identity" palette: Desert Rose on the walls, Tricycle Red on the trim and Lucerne on the ceiling.
4. This wild colour palette is called "Private identity". With the "Private Identity" palette, Horn said she and the other color trends experts were thinking about how we express our individuality in such an overwhelming, populated world. Here, the colors are bright, bold and unexpected. "You're your own person so you're going to put together a personal statement color," Horn said. "You could do a bright red mixed with a powder blue and put a bold gold against it. So you've got this contrast of very bold color and then a very light color and that gives it an unexpected twist."