Find space in the minimal diet of whole whites, whose reign is starting to lose traction, and surrender to the caloric chocolate and the comforting, warm aromas of cocoa. Of all the browns, in fact. Gladly, they're back! Prepare the cinnamon and a pinch of cloves, to start this comforting recipe, with a captive place in all aesthetics. And because we are talking about intense, deep and open browns, it will still be a trip to the recent past, with a mandatory stop in the bohemian '70s.
Shades of chocolate and cocoa
Warm, welcoming, elegant, sophisticated, adaptable to any combination of colors or style, the brown is still joined by notes of vintage nostalgia, which go back to one of its greatest reigns: the 70s of the last century. Now that we enter the third year of the pandemic, it is not surprising that brown is imposing itself as one of the biggest trends of 2022, because we need and strongly want to embrace all that comfort it brings us. We want the chocolatey, warm and cozy peace of its darker and more powerful tones, the elegant lightness of the taupe versions, the energetic shots of cocoa or the shades in which it is mixed with gray, as well as with pink or even with hot sand tones.
Camel and caramel are other variants in vogue, capable of sweetening the most demanding palates and discrediting lighter diets. Brown – and all its variants – is that safe and peaceful, unpretentious and thoughtful place that warms the soul and mellows environments. Sensations that inflate warmth and comfort, sensations that are clearly sought after in this virulent phase of our collective history.
what loses traction
A course that is also beginning to put aside the absence of walls and rethinking the open space era, and cleaner open spacereplaced by projects with more partitions and nooks that make the areas more welcoming and intimate. Apparently, we are in need of lap and security and chocolate is one of the places to which you can always return for proper comfort, inner peace and well-being. With the advantage that browns are a good base palette for any type of interior decoration and achieve the magic of being a 'neutral' tone of enormous potential, which can be combined with almost any color, without offense or aesthetic confrontations. No wonder, therefore, that it is one of the most significant and conscious trends identified by interior designers.
A current that puts a brake on the minimalism that submitted to the yoke of total white, which, despite being assertive and fresh, brings little comfort to the senses and coldness and impersonality is everything that we now run away from.
Choco obsession
In decoration, brown tones play the same antidepressant role as chocolate in a balanced diet. He is the deep, omnipresent neutral. Although destined to receive other information, including chromatic ones, it has an identity and that is what makes brown environments rich, textured and absolutely sophisticated palettes. Few colors can be timeless, classic and bold at the same time, but these are ubiquitous attributes of brown.
With it, raw materials with a noble profile arrive, naturally painted in all imaginable shades of brown:
- Wood, and its veins and aromas, in its various shades
- The tough iron, even better if oxidized
- Clays and terracottas
- Vegetable fibers
- Textiles
- Natural leathers and fur, without dyeing or artifices.
Brown is Nature in one of its basic and primary colors, so it is solid and reliable, even in the most sophisticated and contemporary decorations.
'Browntown' revisited
That's not all. Brown adheres to the always recurring, in fashion and decoration, aesthetics of the 70s, an eternal affective memories well, even for those who did not lived the decade. A time also of hand-knitted manufactures, with their unmistakable jerseys e jacquards and the mythical platforms and bell-bottom pants that vibrated with the winds of change and freedom born in the 60s. Culturally expressive years, which created, for themselves, an unshakable aesthetic, bohemian and blasé, informal and relaxed, psychedelic, energizing and attractive in the palette dominated by the tones of nature, glorified in brown and orange, so often in articulation. There are plenty of reasons why brown has become the new neutral color. A trend that has already crossed the catwalks and invaded the wardrobe, where it imposes itself as the new black, and which arrives in force in interior decoration. In both fashion and interior design, however, brown is committed to staying longer than a season. In fact, brown has always been a fashion and trend, only now it is even more so and with more intensity.
Solidity and reliability
As they take root in the most predominant tone of Nature, the shades of brown convey not only comfort and cosiness, but also cling to the solidity of trees and earth and the reliability of fauna camouflage. Security and delicate beauty that, when wielded with good taste, elevates any environment to a harmonious framework. In addition, there is an undeniable practical side. When we use shades of brown, it's hard to go wrong, which makes decorating a more accessible task for everyone. As the gradation of possible tones is almost infinite – ranging from dark chocolate to milk chocolate, passing through the caramel variants –, the preference for light and bright atmospheres can be maintained, or aesthetic variants with a more ethnic bent, rustic, eclectic or boho can be assumed. When associated with velvets and wool, those vintage aromas return and with it, some notes of humor or nostalgia. Chocolate e always hot or warm. Never cold.
Celebrate the brown color
The celebration of chocolate and cocoa tones can:
- Inspire intimate and welcoming atmospheres
- Blend in with Scandinavian style and with it praise natural-toned materials
- Create revivalist cadres of enormous cultural capital
- Join the country style
- Earn notes of rusticity
- Dye itself with sophistication
- Clinging to the dark tones and perfect imperfections of Wabi-Sabi
- Sweeten industrial and more urban styles
- Intensify the classic
- Mix&match of any theme
- Harmonize old pieces of decoration with new acquisitions
Brown is elegant and democratic, easy to handle and combine and is capable of enriching any atmosphere and elevating any environment. Because with it comes comfort, harmony and that desire to stay a little longer, to bite into another piece of chocolate and to drink another cup of cocoa. Those who handle wood and fill their chests with its aromas are familiar with all the shades of brown, all their nuances and changes at any time of day, in any season of the year. This is the case of Light It Be, always living surrounded by all kind of browns. We even have a lamp we called Café au Lait and another named Moca, because the colors of coffee, chocolate and cocoa are the the ones that fill our hands every day, with more or less powder, with more or less wax.
Photography – Light It Be and Pinterest
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