Trend colours versus timeless colours

A colour is timeless when it has survived at least three aesthetic cycles (approximately 60 to 80 years) without falling from favour. A colour is trendy when it appears massively in the design press, "colour of the year" cards, and Instagram accounts over a two-to-five-year period.

This is not a matter of taste, it is a matter of probability. A recently mass-adopted shade statistically has a high chance of being dated in five years. A shade present in interiors for fifty years has an equal chance of remaining there for another fifty.

The mistake is not loving millennial pink, sage green or mocha mousse. The mistake is putting them on 60% of the walls in a flat you own for twenty years.

The practical rule, called the 80/20 trend rule.

80% timeless shades on large surfaces (walls, ceilings, large furniture, rugs). This is the solid base that will not age. For walls: off-whites, warm beiges, taupes, deep greens (sage, forest), deep blues (teal, navy), mid terracotta.

20% trend touches on small, easily changed elements. Cushions, a throw, a small decorative object, perhaps a wall in a secondary room you repaint every five years. Here, trends are fair game, because the investment is low and the change is quick.

To identify whether a shade is timeless: search for it in interior design books from the 1970s, 1990s, and 2010s. If it is present in all three decades, it is timeless. If it appears only in one of them, it is probably cyclic.

Jean-Louis Deniot never works with trend colours on walls or large furniture. He builds his palette entirely from timeless shades, then adds a single contemporary touch: a recent artwork, a cushion in a current shade. The architecture breathes thirty years, the detail breathes the current season.

India Mahdavi takes a different approach: she reinterprets timeless codes in unexpected combinations. Her pink is not millennial pink, it is a powder pink with a rosy pigment that can be found in 1940s interiors. She positions herself between timeless and trend, which gives her a singular aesthetic.