Building Equipment & Products - Paints and Coatings

The Age of True Lies and the 2021+ Color Trends

September 2020

Building Equipment & Products - Paints and Coatings

The Age of True Lies and the 2021+ Color Trends

September 2020

After last year’s success with our Limited Edition Trend Forecast, we are now excited to launch a second and more exclusive edition of the trend book – NCS Colour Trends 2021+. Featuring in-depth insights about the colour trends for coming years and its drivers.  Complete with colour movements from today and onwards, trend stories, unique image collections and international relevant colour palettes, which makes the trends applicable cross industry. The NCS Colour Trends 2021+ comes in a pearlescent cover, one of the effects that is important for the colour palette for 2021+. This year the Trend 2021+-package also includes a separate colour trend fan deck with pocket-sized NCS QL1 samples to bring with you on the go.

 THE COLOURS

The colour directions of 2021+ are very clear. Emphasised and pushed by a new era of search for truths. The colours are neutral and pale, combined with dark but warm hues and highlighted with red as an important chromatic accent. As we want to use colours to reflect our mood, one colour or nuance is simply not enough, making colour blocking even more prominent 2021. The NCS Colour Trends 2021+ gives you the most important colours and relative combinations of colours to keep track of. In this trend forecast they are presented in four different groups of trends; Virtual Relativity, Bio-Depth, Seeds and Honesty.

THE DRIVERS

As the world is undergoing huge global changes; from the climate to political, economic and cultural transformations, it challenges the essence of us humans. 2021 will be a year of relative uncertainty. Simultaneously we seek the real truth, which challenges the new norm of accepting the untrue, making 2021 the Age of True Lies! As uncertainty and times of change have consequences for our behaviour, it directly affects the way we react in our design and colour preferences. Pushing an era of great focus on humanistic design, but also controversial and contradictory designs.

“When we worked on the forecasts for 2021, we knew that big changes were going to happen in the world, but we did not know that a virus would take place in an arena where climate, politics, economics and gender issues were driving the big changes. What COVID-19 has caused has, however, strengthened our forecasts and made them even more relevant.” - Karl Johan Bertilsson, Creative Director, NCS Colour, April 2020. In NCS Colour Trends 2021+, the four dominating trends are identified based on the most important drivers of today, both independent and interdependent. Reflecting an escape from reality, mysticism, connectivity to our roots and a collective power of inclusivity.