Lori Borgman: Foggy outlook for paint colors

Lori Borgman, Tribune News Service on Feb 4, 2025

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In case you hadn’t heard, the Pantone color of the year is Mocha Mousse. Mocha Mousse is a scrumptious light milk chocolate. I’m not sure I could have it on the walls and resist a deep dive into my dessert cookbooks.

Mocha Mousse is encouraging because, for years, the chosen colors primarily have been neutrals. There was Drift of Mist (gray), Gale Force Winds (gray) and Snowbound (snow sprayed with automobile exhaust). Then there is the entire fog category: Nantucket Fog, London Fog, Ice Fog, Morning Fog, Pacific Fog, Coastal Fog and Foggy Day.

We can’t seem to shake the bad weather.

Sometimes we think of downsizing, but before we could sell our house we’d have to replace all the original solid oak hardwoods with gray manufactured wood-byproduct flooring and slather all the walls in assorted colors of fog. I depress myself just envisioning it.

When our youngest daughter and her husband moved into their first house a decade ago, she asked me to stop by and help choose paint colors. She had 200 paint chips taped to the walls. “They’re all gray,“ I said. “They all look alike.”

“No, they’re not alike,” she said. “Some are gray with blue undertones and some are gray with yellow undertones.”

I only saw gray, grayer and grayest. They ended up choosing Agreeable Gray, a very popular color at the time,

They painted the entire downstairs Agreeable Gray. They found it disagreeable.

They repainted the entire downstairs. A different shade of gray.

She paired it all with dark blue and white accents and it truly snaps. Plus, gray doesn’t make you think of fattening desserts like chocolate mousse and is wonderful for camouflaging children’s grimy handprints.

I’ve often wondered who comes up with all the clever paint names. A press release said the names are chosen in “one long, continuously flowing conversation among a group of colour-attuned people.”

If they are colour-attuned, why can’t they spell it correctly?

Our front room has more windows than any other room in the house and is painted a bright, cheerful yellow. It is the color of rich, creamy Irish butter. When sunshine streams in through all the windows, it is like lounging in a very large comfy croissant.

The press release announcing new colors said that coming up with color names is a rigorous process involving, specialists, marketing pros and lawyers.

You know who they’re missing, right? Cooks. Cooks and chefs.

We need more butter.