Red, a reliable perennial, still makes its mark

Color trends come and go, but certain hues are perennial hangers-on. Take red, for example.

Chicago interior designer Alessandra Branca is a known red lover. When she designed a collection of fabrics for Schumacher, red played a starring role. Sometimes her approach is playful, like pairing red-and-white ticking stripe lampshades with antique gilt bronze candlestick lamps.

Google her work, and the rooms that pop up are laced with the fiery hue that seems to explode in every shot. She mostly likes it on the coral side, and the fact that she’s pretty passionate about Pompeian shades speaks to her Italian heritage.

New York-based designer Alexa Hampton knows how to shake things up with red. While most of the furnishings she designs for Hickory Chair are classic, quiet neutrals with occasional bursts of color, she wowed High Point, N.C., furniture marketgoers when she rolled out several entire spaces in ravishing red. On the walls, in upholstery, as accessories — and, for ultra drama, as a kind of racing ribbon stripe down the backside of a zebra-patterned chair.

“Red wakes you up,” Hampton says. “When you paint a room red, you have a point of view, so don’t use it if you want to hedge.”

Like red lipstick, we love the stroke of sass. It’s bold. It’s sexy. Like a lightning bolt, it instantly grabs your attention. It’s loaded with energy. It evokes passion and love, which is why it has been much talked about this month, with all those clichés of hearts and red roses, the color of valentines. But perhaps especially because the Pantone Color of the Year for 2015 is not red, but Marsala.

Pantone describes the color as a “robust and earthy wine red and says Marsala “enriches our minds, bodies and souls.”

While the chip appears to be a milky, chocolatey rose, interpretations run from maroon to burgundy, dusty to dark. There are subtle differences in all reds from wine-colored to bright, and designers seem to be tap dancing to find the part of the spectrum that works for them.

“I’ve seen way too many burgundy dining rooms … to love this color again anytime soon,” opined Maria Killam, author of the Color Me Happy blog.

Designer and TV personality Courtney Cachet was blunter.

“I am not feeling this year’s color at all. It’s a little confining as it relates to coordinating (elements) … and kind of blah. Marsala feels like Oxblood’s sister who’s late to the party wearing the same — on sale — outfit. Maybe in fashion — for home it kind of sucks.”

Ouch. But she goes on to explain, “Red is so much richer, prettier. It’s a color you can work with,” she says, noting that in her own dining room, which has navy walls and white moldings, she chose cranberry red velvet chairs for pop.

“You don’t have to perk up red with gold or metallic,” she says.

Hampton likes a “more fun cousin” to Marsala: Farrow and Ball’s Brinjal. “It is a wonderful reddish-purple. I just used it in a room that has purple, pale blue, red accents and mahogany doors. It really rocked.”

Often a favorite on runways, red again made a splash with fall and winter fashions from Versace, Dolce &Gabbana and Prada.

As the tartan plaids at J. Crew attest, it can be sporty or elegant and luxurious, as in Oscar de la Renta taffeta.

And it’s a hue that is well-suited for the most traditional to the most modern furniture. But a little goes a long way. Going monochromatic, changing up an all-white or all-beige bland to all-crimson could be way over-the-top spicy for most.

The power of red is immediately apparent.

Consider a brown leather wing chair. Then imagine the same piece in red leather. Pow. A star in a neutral room, still not overpowering, though — and still with a masculine enough edge to appeal to guys.