Living Coral - Pantone Colour of the Year 2019.

I love orange and I love pink, so I am a big fan of the Pantone Colour of the Year 2019, Living Coral, a lovely blend of the two. I have been in favour of coral for a while now, TK Maxx tempted me with a lovely coral leather handbag back in 2013 that I couldn't resist for my summer holiday! I've been making jewellery for a few years and the coral cord is always my favourite to use, it goes so well and enhances so many other colours. It is a really nice accent colour - bright and vibrant with an slight neon feel and it looks really great with earthy, muted tones. This makes it great to add to a neutral outfit or room scheme for a pop of colour. The scheme I have chosen is a complementary scheme, perhaps not in the most obvious sense, rather than intense green and red, it appears in a more muted form with khaki being contrasted by the pink/orange coral.

I thought I would keep an element of last years board and once again feature a print from East End Prints (I've bought a couple from here myself, including the one I used on last years Pantone board, check out their website for a really great selection) called Grand Canyon by Jazzberry Blue. I chose this for a couple of reasons, firstly and most obviously it was a great starting point with its coral tones but also because my husband used to live there (which probably means we will be buying a copy of this print at some point too)!

This living room design is fresh and simple with walls painted in Farrow and Ball Setting Plaster and a khaki green sofa for that desert feel, giving a great natural backdrop for the coral accents to really stand out, especially that funky phone! The plant is a maranta leuconeura, otherwise known as a prayer plant (because at night its leaves stand up like praying hands - when we were given one we didn't know what plant it was and it took a long time for us to realise it was the plant moving and scratching against the wall in the evenings, rather than some kind of creature!) and it has lovely green leaves with vibrant coral pink stripes, a perfect plant for this scheme.

We should all take notice too of the environmental message behind the carefully chosen name for this years colour, Living Coral, the colour of a natural, healthy coral reef, something that is coming under threat by warming seas.

Rx