Galaxy Background Pink and Blue

Leslie Harrington, Ph.D. and executive director of the Color Association of the United States, tells us that blue's popularity has been on the rise across the board for the last few seasons. "From cars to power tools to appliances . . . you name it, everyone is getting in on the blue craze, and if they are not, they are missing out big time," she says. "At our last interior forecast meeting, we all showed up in various shades of blue, cobalt included." Her team forecasted that various shades of the color will be even more of a thing in 2020–21.

"People in Western cultures (and largely in non-Western cultures as well) tend to like blues more than any other hue, and they tend to like highly saturated colors more than less saturated colors," says Stephen E. Palmer, a professor of the graduate school of psychology at University of California, Berkeley, citing a color-preference study he conducted with Karen B. Schloss in 2010. In it, they analyzed their subjects' proclivity for eight colors in four different shades (saturated, light, dark, and muted). Saturated blue won by a mile. Why? Their research found one theory to be stronger than the rest: "Ecological Valence Theory says that people tend to like a color to the degree that they like the things that are that color," Stephen explains. "So people like blues because they like the things that are blue: clear skies, clean lakes, oceans, sapphires, bluebells, blueberries, etcetera."

Our invariably intense emotional response to hyper blue—positive and negative—is perhaps the strongest argument for its trendiness. "I'm really interested in this idea of chromophobia, the fear of color," says artist Bari Ziperstein, whose top-selling cobalt blue–splashed collection is fittingly named the Klein Blue Series. "There are whole magazines dedicated to how to do white-on-white—I'm not that kind of person. I feel like Yves Klein blue, it just speaks to a celebration of color. It's so saturated, it's so flat, it's so matte."

Klein Blue Series vases by BZippy & Co..

Photo: Courtesy of BZippy & Co.

"I think [cobalt blue's pervasiveness] may have something to do with how essential and artificial it feels at the same time," says Forrest Lewinger, founder of ceramics brand Workaday Handmade. His first collection, in cobalt blue and white, was the one to firmly establish him in the industry. "It doesn't occur naturally in the world so it takes a lot of human effort and ingenuity to produce it. Chinese potters kept the recipes secret for hundreds of years before they spread to Japan and later Europe." He goes on: "Blue is a special human invention, so much so that the word for blue doesn't show up in written language until relatively late in the game. There are few colors that have such emotional baggage. Blue is the word for loneliness and melancholy. It's also the word for infinity and possibility."

Like all long-term relationships, ours with hyper blue is complicated. But that's what keeps us coming back for more.

Workaday Handmade's Striped Milking Stool, featuring hyper blue stripes.

Photo: Adam Kremer/Courtesy of Workaday Handmade

Galaxy Background Pink and Blue

Source: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/hyper-blue-color-trend

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