Pittsburgh® Paints Sees Two Sides to the 2009-2010 Color Story: Surreal and Real

Color Trends Express the Divergent Nature of the Human Experience

PITTSBURGH, October 30th /PRNewswire/ — Today Pittsburgh Paints and The Voice of Color® presented their 2009-2010 emerging color trends, themed Surreal/Real to convey two divergent yet equally compelling directions for home décor in the coming months. Representing people's desire for personal expression, the four Surreal/Real color palettes let consumers choose—fantastical or rational—creating a unique and personalized color story for each and every home.

"Picture someone standing with her two feet planted on the ground and her head in the clouds—living, in a sense, between earth and sky. That's what today's experience is all about—the duality and the dynamism," says Josette Buisson, artistic director of Pittsburgh Paints and The Voice of Color. "On the one hand, there's the surreal—surprising and magical. On the other hand, there's the real—what is logical, tangible, and knowable."

Buisson points out that all four new palettes feature colors that are more saturated than those of seasons past. "These are more saturated colors, the better for creating the kind of contrast that is so satisfying right now," she says. "Look for a flash of blue, a soft pink, a very surprising green, and plum, which is super-important for the upcoming season," she adds.

Just as a trend is never about just one color, notes Buisson, a season is never about just one trend. "With Surreal/Real, we reflect the collective experience while acknowledging that there are different ways to assimilate what is going on in the world around us," she explains.

The two color palettes from the Surreal side of the 2009-2010 Surreal/Real color story are:

Avatar — Clean matte shades of green, yellow, and new blue vibrate together, exhibiting a luminosity stabilized only by flat black and white in this theme that represents the other side of reality. Like an alter ego in a virtual world, Avatar unveils a futuristic and fantastic version of reality. Furnishings succumb to this influence, exhibiting simplistic silhouettes, dominant colorways, playful form, and a high degree of quirkiness. Look for prints and patterns with abstract, bold graphics, often against white.
Wonderland — Like a fairy tale, this palette is romantic—proffering a paintbox of soft, warm cosmetic shades in soft pink and ivory against one sumptuous brown note. This theme blends the beautiful and the sublime in a mystical mix of ornate and minimal, modern and vintage, classic and neo-classic. From modern baroque to art nouveau and even a touch of rococo, Wonderland takes its mood from the arts, utilizing rounded silhouettes, precise detailing, and sheer, transparent materials to create an other-world of coziness, welcome, air, and light.

The two color trends comprising the Real side of the 2009-2010 Surreal/Real color story are:

Indie — A carpenter's palette of railway blues, patinaed browns, and engineer's green, this trend is born from a desire to reinvent and simplify. With roots in the warm shades of agriculture and the iconic designs of the early days of industry, this palette veers from the fast fashion path to forge its own truly independent trail. Straightforward silhouettes, sturdy materials, and true craftsmanship prevail in honest classics made of leather, wood, and metal—in homes that show a return to simplicity yet remain on the cutting edge of style.
Journey — Down-to-earth tones blend together in saturated harmonies or stand alone as accents against dark browns and inky blacks in this palette representing life's most meaningful journeys: spiritual, cultural, philosophical. Urban and tribal themes harmonize to create a melting pot of modern ethno-chic. Warm, dry materials play against clean, tactile surfaces while prints, patterns, and shapes showcase an eclectic assemblage of organic and natural forms—flora, fauna, and terra firma.

What makes this season's color direction different from those recently past? "Last year, color was very focused on the external and the environmental; it was concerned and reactive," says Buisson. While consumers haven't abandoned their interest in becoming less self-centered and more aware of their impact on the planet, Buisson contends that Surreal/Real represents a shift to a more internalized focus on the human being. "Are you down-to-earth? Is your head in the clouds?" asks Buisson. "The good news is, whatever your answer, there's a color palette that's not only new … it's you!"

The Surreal/Real color palettes, as well as the more than 1,800 colors from The Voice of Color, are available in any of Pittsburgh Paints' paint lines, including environmentally responsible Pure Performance®. The first paint to receive Green Seal® Class A Certification, Pure Performance is a premium quality paint that has zero VOCs and features minimal odor during application and drying.

To learn more about Pittsburgh Paints and The Voice of Color's Surreal/Real color palettes, and to find the dealer nearest you, please visit the Pittsburgh Paints color Web site at www.voiceofcolor.com.

For additional images, including the individual color palettes, please contact Craig Pellegrini — craig.pellegrini@marsteller.com or 412.394.6649.

PPG Color Leadership

PPG employs more than 20 color stylists around the world, each specializing in different markets, who collaborate to determine styles and color trends for the home, electronics, and automobiles. PPG's unique position as a color leader in multiple markets allows it to observe and translate emerging global color trends for its customers' applications—from consumer goods to automotive color, from residential to commercial to industrial design.

About The Voice of Color

Pittsburgh Paints and PPG developed The Voice of Color program on the premise that every color has an emotional association and that individuals are drawn to different colors for reasons inherently tied to their unique personalities. With more than 1,800 colors to choose from, the program offers an integrated, comprehensive design system that offers tools and materials to redefine the world of color. By identifying their color personality, the program assists consumers in following a simple path to choosing colors for their surroundings. Among The Voice of Color elements are the Color Sense Game™, yearly color trends, exclusive color families and color palettes — such as Hacienda Style and Fallingwater® inspired colors — unique decorating color chips, wet paint sample program, and Web site: www.voiceofcolor.com