How in Bob’s Precious Pizza Pope Name Are Paint Colors Polarizing Too?

(Couldn’t help myself. A little tickled about a South Side of Chicago kid in the spotlight.) Are paint colors polarizing and truly contentious matters for design enthusiasts? Or are a few voices doing all the shouting? Are the voices actual breathing internet users or just bot noise? Is any “controversy” one more marketing ruse to divide camps and rile visual aesthetes about what’s in, what’s over, and what’s going viral? Feels like I should know the answer. I don’t. I only know followers reach out for color help because they sense it somehow matters.

Are Paint Colors Polarizing Too?

And it does matter. Maybe it’s years of design blogging clouding my perception, but increasing debates about color raging on my channels seem fueled by unprocessed pain, powerlessness, and hurt we see transmitted in other sectors.

People seem ill equipped to transform intense emotive states. Social media’s echo chamber provides an instrument for transmission. Of course, another possibility is that no battle royale about colors for interiors exists.

Maybe it is an artificial debate with bots, marketing, and media tricks churning out superficial conversations on boosted social media threads to encourage design freaks to grow reactive.

A recycled salesy strategy of ‘identify (or create) the online consumer’s problem, then offer the solution.’ Is the whole enterprise as transparent and silly as ever?

Should Paint Colors Ever Be Cancelled?

The beauty of a color, any color, is hardly debatable if it moves you.

I understand objections to a given color that feels out of place in a random image seen online. Or a “color of the year” that seems utterly cloying. But a wall color selected for a private quarters designed to suit a particular earthling in a particular context? Can we not respond with more curiosity than judgment?

We’re a diverse bouquet of flowers. Earth blooms with variation to uplift, enjoy, and cherish.

Just saw an article about Gen Z Tik-Tok-ers poking fun at Millennials’ love of sage green, and I have to wonder…is this real life?

Are we so tapped for interesting topics that fondness for sage green is now fodder?

How does color preference become “sad” or embarrassing without help from a machine splitting everything into “fashionable” and “unfashionable?”

Don’t get me started on harsh judgment percolating online about quiet or neutral palettes and their implications for the human soul.

Pale tones often dismissed as too safe? Hardly a safe topic these days.

Dualistic Thinking & Beauty

Does social media strengthen dualistic thinking and discourage inclusion as easily as algorithmic sculpting and late stage capitalism shape our appetites?

Maybe.

Have non-dual thinking, wonder, and curiosity become irrelevant to open and pleasant design and paint color conversations?

Doubtful.

But have algorithms, pandemic fatigue, and cultural revolutions created a combative subculture of narrow biases and fragile egos?

Let me know your thoughts…along with any intense feelings about sage green :).

When will we welcome the beauty of mystery and the rainbow back to our skies?

Peace to you right where you are.

-michele

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