Here’s the colour you will see in every Interior this 2023. Pantone 18-1750 Viva Magenta, vibrates with vim and Vigor! Rooting from the red family but with a brand new signal of strength. It is safe to say that Viva Magenta reveals pure joy and empowerment. A beautiful, rich shade of crimson that we just love injecting into our interiors and bespoke furnishings. Viva Magenta’s organic origins stem from the unique cochineal beetle, which produces a bright carmine dye. The most precious, strongest and boldest natural dye. Reds are power colours that reflect a celebration of life. As a bright, crimson red, Viva Magenta balances boldness with a feeling of fun. Inspiring us with confidence and bravery. Pantone states in this year’s release of Pantone that ‘What distinguishes this year’s Colour of the Year from last year’s Pantone 17-3938 very peri, which also married the technical with nature – is Viva Magenta’s ability to answer our collective need for strength’. The colour offers us assurance and motivation. Three years deep into a pandemic, unstable economy, climate change, and facing wars, we always need the motivation and support to carry on. Viva Magenta is such a powerful colour, that injecting it into your interiors and homes, will help to give you that motivation and excitement every day helping to keep that positive mental attitude. Here is where we at Cotterell & Co come in. Our Interior Designers team has been working hard to pull together some beautifully bold lighting ideas and home accessories to help!

The fundamental importance of colour throughout your home and interiors comes down to how a colour makes you feel and influences your mood. My favourite colours trend within homes tend to be orange, pink, green and blue. A colour palette that works well together but also conveys a sense of serenity, calm and relaxation but adds pops of joy and energy. Homes are no longer just your hub for domestic life, they have become our place to unwind, relax and reset. Homes have also recently become places of work since so many of us now work from home. It is so important to create the right amount of relaxation to allow work, study, play and pursue your hobbies. It's why in recent times, we are seeing more and more people taking great care in designing and decorating. Turning houses into homes. This is where this year’s Pantone – Viva Magenta comes into play. The perfect colour to add to your home to help promote motivation, happiness and excitement. Our experts here at Cotterell & Co are going to share our tips and tricks on how to add pops of colour throughout your home.

Our first step to pulling together a design scheme or mood board is always starting with some artwork. There is no easier way to inject some colour into your walls or space by prints or a canvas. Take a look at our Pink Flamingo Canvas for example. Made from the purest of shades to capture the majestic beauty of the American pink flamingo. This framed masterpiece is a work of art that will bring some serenity into your home. Adding this pop of the Pantone Viva Magenta, while having the slight pale blue tones is the perfect start to pulling together a design scheme as your colour palette has already started to grow.

Another way of adding pops of colour throughout your home is with soft furnishings and accessories. This could be anything from some scatter cushions right through to a funky feature table lamp. Here at Cotterell & Co, we have everything to help you achieve this. Mixing and matching these decorative cushions requires a little bit of know-how to get them looking just right. Not only does the perfectly placed cushion make your sofa look cosy and inviting, but it is also a very cost-effective way of refreshing a space by adding a mixture of materials and colours.  Starting with our Persian rug-inspired cushion, which features mostly bold pink, with touches of green and blue. Perfectly toning in with the Flamingo Canvas, but adding another rustic feel to this design scheme. The key to success when adding cushions with such a bold pattern, is balancing them out with some plain scatter cushions which tie in. Our bellini cushion range is perfect for doing this. The Bellini teal is a perfect example of a plain scatter cushion to tie this together. Don’t be afraid to combine multiple textures from velvet to silk to fur. Combining lots of different textures will help to add depth to your home while keeping it cosy.

Lighting is another important aspect of design when thinking about how space affects our mood. Light and mood are two different concepts that have a very powerful connection with each other. We mostly use our homes at night, where in the winter months it can get very dark. Both bright lights and dim lights can negatively affect our mood. Bright lighting in dining spaces can decrease appetite whereas dim lighting can overly encourage overeating. This is why it is so important to get lighting just right. When we are active, we need plenty of bright task lighting but when we are chilling out and relaxing, it is all about the mood lighting. You can create this by using table lamps and floor lamps throughout the space, avoiding anything overly bright. Our bespoke shade service is a great way to add more colour and pattern to a space while still helping to create that mood lighting. Check out our mood board we pulled together using the Flamingo Canvas as the basis of the design scheme.

1. Humbug Table Lamp with Fuchsia Pink Shade

2. Jaffa Orange Shade with Fluffy Rainbow Inner

3. Can Can Flamingo Table Lamp

4. Havana 43cm Teal Cushion

5. Natural Eucalyptus Spray

6. Purple Wildflower Spray Flower

7. Cher Antique Gold Pendant

8. Lucca Tobacco Velvet Chair

9. Bellini Teal Cushion 43cm 

10. Red Pattern Cushion

Starting by pulling out the orange tones within the Persian-inspired cushion, we decided to add some more pops of colour with our Lucca Tobacco Velvet Chair. Working perfectly with the plain bellini teal cushion behind. Carrying on from this, we felt our fluffy rainbow shade with Jaffa orange outer toned in as we were building up the scheme. Our Fluffy Rainbow fabric, features a natural linen background, with orange, pink, blue and yellow fluffy fragments. To bring in more of this year's Pantone colour, we choose to add in our very popular humbug table lamp, paired with a very on-trend fuchsia pink shade. We have a huge range of fabrics, accessories, lighting, furniture and much more, perfect for when you are looking to inject some colour into your home. Now is the time to jazz up your home in this year's colour of the year.  

I hope you have enjoyed reading our little blog about this year's Pantone Colour of the Year and how we at Cotterell & Co could help you add some pops of colour to your home. Hopefully, we have inspired you to be bold and brave when it comes to designing. Remember, we have a well-trained team of Interior Designers here who are just raring to go ready to help you turn your house into a home. We are all happy to help with anything as simple as picking a paint colour, all the way to designing your full house. Don’t hesitate to contact us via Email, Direct Message, WhatsApp or simply just give us a call!