This is one holiday season in which a red wine spill doesn’t have to be a disaster. Rather than run to the kitchen in search of club soda and a dabbing cloth, you can just dye the rest of the rug or sofa the same color and consider yourself on-trend.
As long as the wine you serve is marsala.
Marsala is Pantone’s choice for 2015 Color of the Year. Whether you love or hate the brownish-red hue, expect to see a lot of it. Just as Pantone’s 2014 choice of radiant orchid influenced home interiors, fashion and graphic art (how many of you didn’t buy something purple in the past 12 months?), the color institute’s designation of marsala as the new “it” color means you’ll soon be seeing this hue in fabrics, paints, countertops, appliances and accessories.
But will you buy them? Some 85% of shoppers say color is a primary reason for buying a particular product, according to Kiss Metrics. If Pantone’s 2015 color of the year aligns with consumer taste, you’ll be jumping at the chance to buy wine-colored rugs, commodes and duvets. If it doesn’t, you’ll see those same items on drastically-reduced clearance sales in the fall.

Color of the Year: Did Pantone Get it Right?

Marsala is a “subtly seductive shade, one that draws us in to its embracing warmth,” says Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of Pantone Color Institute. Pantone’s website also says the “impactful, full-bodied qualities of Marsala make for an elegant, grounded statement color when used on its own or as a strong accent to many other colors.”
Not everyone agrees.
“Think rust, the grimy, gag-inducing type that lines corners or frat boy dormitory-style bathrooms. Or blood, the freaky dried kind whose iron content has been exposed to the air long enough to evoke a dull brick,” writes Tanya Basu in The Atlantic. “Icky” marsala is a “color that makes you want to go to Olive Garden or order Tampax in bulk,” Kathleen Hou writes in New York magazine.  Ouch..

Sampling Marsala

But some celebrities, including Blake Lively, and some brands, including Black & Decker, are already embracing marsala. If you’d like to dabble in marsala before investing thousands of dollars in, say, Fortuny Barberini in blackberry texture fabric, consider buying a set of wine-colored vases or trays suggested by Alesandra Dubin on Today.com.

Other In-Vogue Color Choices

Pantone is a key influencer of color, but not the only one. Two paint companies offer different fashionable colors for 2015.
 is “a neutral that’s natural,” according to the company. Apartment Therapy calls it “truly lovely; light and cool,” and the photos on the Benjamin Moore site certainly make it appear as if the color could go with just about anything.
Before you paint an entire room in green paint, neutral or not, buy some samples and paint an area near a window and one that’s dark and see what you think of the color at day, night and with lights on and off. You may find that a shade lighter or darker than Guilford Green gives you the look you see in the paint samples.
Benjamin Moore sells Guilford Green in three grades of paint – Aura Interior, Regal Select Interior and Ben Interior. Consumer Reports gives top marks to Aura Interior, which sells for $68 a gallon. To get the look for less, read our recent blog, “Chipping Away at the Allure of Luxury Brand Paints.” 
Sherwin-Williams picked a bolder, brighter color for 2015. Its Coral Reef may make you feel nostalgic for the 1970s or your last trip to the Bahamas. Jackie Jordan, director of color marketing for Sherwin-Williams says the color “embodies a cheerful approach to design” and has an “unexpected versatility” that “brings life to a range of design aesthetics, whether traditional, vintage, cottage or contemporary.”
Coral Reef, which sells for about $63 to $67 a gallon in Sherwin-Williams’ top-performing Emerald line of paint, is certainly cheerful. But, just as some of those charming island souvenirs look tacky when you get them home, a color as vivid as coral might work better in small doses – on an accent wall, table legs or door frame trim.

Would I Wear It?

Before you get carried away with any color trend for your home, consider how the color would look on your home’s inhabitants. Would you choose Pantone Marsala, Benjamin Moore Guilford Green or Sherwin-Williams Coral Reef as a backdrop for family portraits? Would you wear a wine dress, a silvery-green scarf or coral lipstick? If the answer is yes, then you’ll probably enjoy updating your home with 2015’s trendy colors.
It’s not that your fashion and home design choices should match, but we tend to gravitate to colors for a reason – they flatter us – and it just makes sense to adorn our homes in colors we like, trendy or not.
And, if it makes you feel better, some professional interior designers are also looking at different colors for 2015. House Beautiful asked 11 pros to pick their colors for next year, and the shades included Mediterranean blue, olive green, aqua, gray and plum.

Color trends are fun – and important. But let your personal tastes prevail. I for one feel quite on the cutting edge having recently purchased and finally received a lovely chair from Hickory Chair that I had covered in a marsala-hued velvet. I had no idea that this color would be “the” it color, it just looks great with my rug!

What do you think? Do you love the deep, warm tones of Marsala? The monochromatic look of Guilford Green? The island feel of Coral Reef? Do you take Color of the Year choices seriously or do they amuse more than influence your home remodeling decisions?
Please share any and all thoughts about color trends in the comments section below.