Bruised Steel

Bruised Steel

Violet trends with power!

Being a leading color trend takes patience, timing, and moxy. Bruised Steel is such a hue. This deep, blue influenced red creates a violet color that has risen to the top, emerging as an important hue, trending in fashion and home.

It’s about time, too. From discussions in North American 2016 CMG meetings, to arrive in 2018, it is on target this year to create a new awareness of violet. Bruised Steel is a color that transcends its various roots. It is shedding its past as a color reserved for royalty and reverence, as well as its frivolous side for children’s playrooms, or their toy dinosaur. With a history as a valuable pigment, and a new meaning of power, it has grown in maturity and strength.

With technological origins and dark hued metals Bruised Steel lives up to its name as a color that suggests a battle won. To come out on top of product trend colors, violet is always a fighter and Bruised Steel bursts onto the 2018 color scene with bravado and a new sense of self. As we embrace our technologies and machines, we realize that we also need to balance and control them, sometimes struggling with difficult decisions of who is in final control.

Fresh in its purest state, you can also consider Bruised Steel with special metallic effects, or with a high gloss surface on metals and wood, adding to its contemporary product applications. In textiles, it adds an edge to velvet and wool, and with a luster finish appears deeper and richer in leather both real and faux. Whether in fashion or home, it is an accent color that demands attention with a knowing glance.

Bruised Steel, arising from an initial trend talk about human and machine, has emerged as the color of the victor. There is majesty to the color, yes, but that reference is secondary to the energy and power it holds within.

Download the full Color Alert®

September 2018 CONTRIBUTORS: Judith van Vliet, Sandy Sampson, Mark Woodman, Maryanne Cole