Interior Colour Trends 2024

Coming off the back of our invigoratingly toned ‘Coastal Path’ collection in 2023, Smith & Brooks have rolled into 2024 with a new collection, ‘Southern Melody’ that brings some beautiful new colours to energise your interiors. We have all heard the hype around Pantone’s 2024 colour of the year, ‘Peach Fuzz’ and its gorgeous bursts of happiness have already been spotted popping up around the place and I am sure you’ll be keen to know if it will make its way into our works too.

Our palette evolves through the year in relation to the work we are creating and it seems if one collection is born out of the last in natural progression. So after a glorious delve into the colours of the coast at the end of 2023 we have moved further south again and into the grasslands and woody forests for our new works, ‘Southern Melody’ bringing in new colours for 2024.

One of the most notable additions to our 2024 colour palette is yellow oxide. We have used yellow previously in works like the Coastal Banksia Muse works but the yellow we use here was more of a sweet sunny pastel. Yellow oxide however finds with its burnt and densely formed tones reflects different elements of the landscape that can be found in dry grasslands, the sap forming on eucalypt bark, and soils through to floral forms that are perhaps starting to dry. You can find this stunning tone on some of our new works such as Radiata Moment I. It is also a key colour in our works Ovata Still I and Ovata Still II which are both haloed with a tonal range of yellow oxide.

We have been moving ever so slightly into the area of desaturated red too. Having used a lot of burnt sienna and raw sienna in our coastal works to tie in with the strong presence of timber within the beach areas of Australia it’s no surprise that this led us to a more red-based tone for highlights. We have been rediscovering our love of terracottas and having a muted red to finish this range made sense. We played around with some red in early 2023 but these fell squarely into the magenta part of the scale and now we have warmed them right up. Our new addition of this earthy dry red has been inspired by the red that seems to go full circle from the new growth on eucalyptus and bottlebrush but can then be distinctly found in the spent banksia flower heads and dried fallen leaves. You can find these highlights in Kangaroo Grass Moment I, Ovata Still I and Ovata Still II.

Blues and greens have been making appearances in our work for a while now and are used as more of a highlight than the main colour theme for our works. The muted blue will carry through from our coastal works and this comes from the idea that often when looking at landscapes, trees and foliage there is often this powerful blue sky beaming through gaps in the leaves and branches creating wonderful contrast that hints at the expansive space beyond. Our greens are moving into a range that is directly inspired by the dry grasslands and woodland forests as well as the heath and scrub-lands that merge with the coastal landscape. These tones can be glimpsed in works such as Coastal Banksia Moment I, Radiata Moment I and the two works, Ovata Still I and Ovata Still II. We have also done some more works revisiting the mountain blue eucalyptus tree native to Girraween and these have boldly incorporated a blue-green shade as a contrasting tone to the reds that lay beneath. These two new works are Mountain Blue Song II, And Mountain Blue Still I.

So where does this leave us in relation to Pantone’s colour of the year for 2024, Peach Fuzz? We have used plenty of pink tones in the past including Australian Salmon Pink and Magenta but Peach Fuzz would take us into new horizons with its cheeky hints of lemon and champagne. Currently, we have incorporated a small amount of pink into some of our larger works but it could hardly be classed as Peach Fuzz. We do have a new eucalyptus leaf we would like to explore though which has a subtle yet undeniable link to the 2024 colour of the year. The native poplar gum which was recently found on Kerrin’s father’s property in Malanda in Far North Queensland features a magical way of revealing this tone. The new growth of the poplar gum is a sweet light green highlighted with soft blush tones that seem to come to life in the morning sun. When the soft new growth is lit from behind by the rising sun it lights up causing the pink to take on a glowing hint of champagne with sparkling edges – and it’s just beautiful! 

So it would seem that you may see us splashing around some Pantone Peach Fuzz very soon! Our new love affair with yellow oxide is confirmed and there is definitely a bit of curiosity around muted reds and terracottas which will form more of our future works. While we do not aim to specifically use trending colours in our work it seems the range of colours we use actually allows us to find connections to these declared colours of the year anyway. Pantone has done a wonderful job of selecting such an uplifting and fun colour in Peach Fuzz for 2024 and even if we don’t end up using it we will certainly delight in seeing it featured around the place.