Calling all Biophiliacs!

Calling all Biophiliacs!

Things are looking rosy for 2021 for the renovators and stylists here on the Coast. The rest of us may need an interpreter to understand the strange language of colours when it comes to paint and making things pretty. The beautiful set at Dulux decree a new colour every year and it is treated as a very serious business.

The shade for next year is Terra Rose and a whole lot of off- shoots of this colour. I know. This colour sounds like a great bottle of chilled wine we could order to celebrate spring and quench our thirst while scoffing a dozen oysters. I can hear myself now asking the bar man “Hi! May I please have a bottle of your 2019 Terra Rose and I am sitting at table 33 thanks.” But the prediction of Terra Rose (it is a fancy way of saying apricot or blush which was a fancy way of saying light orange in the 80’s) is just the tip of the golden iceberg as the good people at Dulux have outlined an entire fashion forecast when it comes to colours. They think they are meteorologists when it comes to this colour caper.

Dulux have decreed the ‘Nourish’ palette is also the new black of 2021. It features “natural beauty with biophilic hues of mossy and sage greens, turmeric and citrus. A renewed palette of warm neutrals inspires fresh interest by adding accents of yellow and green.” Pardon, Dulux? I don’t know about you, but I had to read this colour palette description about 5 times and even then, I was not fabulous enough to decode what on earth it means. Sage green I do understand, and I think the people at Dulux had probably been waving around some stage sticks filled with exotic herbs and inhaled a bit too much smoke when they released their colour forecast.

I had to google what “biophilic” even means. It turns out biophilia is not a condition people have who want to have intimate relationships with dead people. Nope. It means humans have a genetic connection to nature. Well, yeah, clearly. We like to call it getting back to basics. Who doesn’t love to walk in the Noosa National Park or go for a swim at the beach? Well, now you can brag to your friends that you are filling up your biophilic cup. My biophilic cup floweth over if we head up to Rainbow Beach for the weekend.

Anyway, I got lots of giggles reading this new Dulux colour forecast as it also states, “The Nourish palette captures the deep appreciation for natural beauty as soothing colours encourage moments of stillness.” Let me tell you with a tribe of beautiful kids and dogs and 5 fish I could paint every corner of our home the exact shade of rocks and rivers and it would still be a cesspit of glorious noise and mess with sticky fingerprints and banshee like screaming coming from every corner.

I guess on a basic level we tried to copy this colour palette mimicking nature in the early 2000’s as everyone I knew had blue and yellow in their kitchen and lounge rooms. Remember? We all had those classy sea blue lounges with bright yellow cushions! One fancy friend even took this connection to nature concept to the next level as she had a toilet seat cover that was clear with real sand and seashells inside it. Classy. And my brother had a plastic ‘Billy the Bass Fish’ mounted over his billiard table and it would sing ‘Take Me To The River’ or ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ on very merry Friday nights.

The colour experts at Dulux would NOT have approved.