“Choosing Sweet Embrace as our Color of the Year 2024 reflects our extensive research into global social, design and consumer trends for 2024,” said Henri Bijsterbosch, colour marketing manager for AkzoNobel’s Industrial Coatings business.

“This research found that, in a changing environment, we’re on a quest to belong. We need places that make us feel calm, but which also provide moments of joy. Identified by our in-house paints and coatings colour experts and international design professionals, these trends will influence how we choose our colours,”.

AkzoNobel’s Global Wood Design Studio in High Point, North Carolina, has created three unique palettes, or ‘colour stories’, around the Color of the Year that are all driven by the themes of belonging, calm and joy encapsulated by Sweet Embrace.

These colour stories provide an essential toolbox for furniture designers and joinery manufacturers looking for on-trend wood coatings to differentiate their projects. While for consumers, they make it easy to choose colours and combinations for a trendy look.

The three-colour stories are:

  • Transitional – a warm colour story: reminds us of home, a place that feels comfortable and safe, combining shades of stone, soil and clay.
  • Cottage – a calm colour story: evokes thoughts of nature and the essence of life, bringing together the soft greens and blues of the woods and the sea.
  • Contemporary – an uplifting colour story: joyful colours “that put a smile on your face and inspire imagination and creativity, with dreamy lilacs, fluid greys and modern yellows”.

Specially crafted finishes are required for different products, as wood coatings are often applied to highlight and play with the natural beauty of the wooden substrate. AkzoNobel’s highly trained technical service team works closely with the Wood Design team to ensure finishes are robust and can be industrialised for customers around the world.

“Our Color of the Year, Sweet Embrace, and its three complementary colour stories, are an inspiration for great combinations of colours to create a variety of different moods. They enable us to personalise our environments to fit the times we live in, as well as bringing a sense of stability and moments of joy to our spaces,” said Mr Bijsterbosch. “We translate these trending colours to create robust finishes for our customers globally.”