Design trends

Colour Trend: Warm Monochrome

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COLOUR TREND: WARM MONOCHROME

Image Credit: Banda Property

Colour trend alert: this is a black and white interior, but not as you know it. Dialled down and textured up, the new way to do monochrome is to tread softly, softly with shades of grey in place of black and everything from off-white to heritage cream rather than puritan white. Not to mention, texture in abundance so that you feel the colour trend as much as you see it. Wondering how to achieve it within your own walls? Secret Room reveals all.

BLACK AND WHITE — THE NEW HUES

Monochrome is one of the most age-defying colour combinations out there. In fact, in its most classic sense (true black and true white), it is not really a trend at all; it’s anything but short-lived, a fad or an of-the-minute look having been loved and used in fashion, film and interiors for decades.

Instead of true black, expect slate and charcoal greys. Most designers deem anything paler than mid-grey to fall outside of the warm monochrome bracket and enters the realm of a pale, neutral scheme. On the light side, consider any warmer version of white to be fair game. Cream, off-white, stone, putty and taupe can all take white’s place and your room will feel all the gentler for it.

Remember too that warm monochrome is a sliding scale, so you can combine charcoal and a grey-tinted white, or keep one of the original components of monochrome, and mix it with a softer sibling to give rise to a black and cream living room interior, for example, or a charcoal and white bedroom.

MASTERING TEXTURE

True of any colour topic in interior design, even the best colour palettes will fall flat without texture to provide lift, light, shade and visual comfort. With warm monochrome, texture first serves to provide depth to the scheme.

With your whole room subscribing to the warm monochrome palette, you are able to strengthen your colour choices. Textured accents aren’t solely serving further iterations of black and white—instead they show how contrasting textures can bring a new dimension to each hue.

By exploring colour through texture—be it slubbed linen sofas, rough-hewn wooden floorboards, bouclé wool cushion covers, suede photo frames, velvet pouffes or onyx granite objects—you open your eyes to warm monochrome’s hidden depths.