On white

Colour is out of fashion at the moment, as happens from time to time. White is back.

Even people who could not really explain the difference between colour and tone — even people who don’t realise that tone is actually just colour, but thinned down with varying amounts of grey, the variation in the amount being the point — would, at the moment, probably prefer a cool, Gustavian space, full of massive pieces of Edwardian brown furniture arbitrarily slathered in Farrow & Ball All White, to the same space furnished with the un-modernised brown furniture and dressed with deep colours such as emerald, azure or Farrow & Ball’s own Picture Room Red.

Why this is the case is a question for those who enjoying staring thoughtfully into the shifting deep currents of mainstream taste. There have been points — perhaps most recently in the 1980s — when colour ruled. There have also been other points — the 1970s, the 1990s — when cool white interiors, enlivened with the most subtle of tonal interventions — were far more acceptable. Perhaps this iteration suggests that change itself is what we seek, the freshness of transformation and renewal, the occasional decorative climacteric?

For the moment, though, colour is out. Read the rest of this entry »