Orange?

That’s a Seventies colour, isn’t it? Good grief!!

But … notice the orange touches creeping into styled sets and ads in the glossy mags, and couple that with Kate Watson-Smyth’s recent comment in her MadAboutTheHouse blog, and you know a movement is afoot.

‘You might as well prepare yourself for the burnt orange but it IS coming’ she says, and we spot the difference instantly.  This colour is Burnt Orange, and nowhere have I seen it teamed with 70’s brown. And just to show how far off the radar it is at the moment, try searching it in Google Images and add ‘interior design’: it still looks calamitous.  So the difference today will be the colours we team it with, what we use it for – and how much of it you can take.

‘Orange Is The New Black’, according to Netflix (haven’t seen it myself but it has a huge fan base).  It’s a good play on words, but I don’t think orange, even burnt, is ever going to be a design staple. If you’re in love with a colour, if you’re a major design guru or if you don’t mind shelling out on major pieces of furniture on a regular basis, by all means buy a huge orange sofa or other orange big-ticket items. But if you want to start with this trend and still love it when others have jumped off, cue subtlety, styling and picking complementary colours.  It’s actually amazing how many of them fit the bill. Check out my Burnt Orange Pinterest page for some really interesting ideas!

In the meantime, I think I deserve a pat on the back for using orange particularly with the beautiful blue hues of Persian Glazes. Long before the merest hint of a trend! This says a lot about their individuality and the individual ways in which they can be used and loved long after a trend has passed.