Cranberry and burgundy appearing again too. Oh why did I reupholster than burgundy/hunter green striped sofa. Of all the color trends I've lived through (lots) that was my favorite combination--minus the Victorian wallpaper borders and occasional ducks.

Yes, of course, Pal, you are right.

It is more complicated. It seems to me that with each new season in design, we are all looking for something to refresh the eye and the imagination, and so are many clients.

And you're so right about high end designers. Same with some fashion designers. Often the younger "society decorators" who didn't start with trust funds or vastly wealthy partners have come up through the established firms, and continue with the client lists of people like Sister Parish and Albert Hadley and Mark Hampton and Bunny Williams.

Then there's the social butterfly route. Mario Buatta is probably as famous as a fixture at dinner parties and a master flatterer of prosperous clients as he is for his rooms.

Once you've made a name for yourself, the big money comes from designing and/or branding retail products and publishing books.

Good Heavens! I think that was the green color in DH's green and cranberry large stripe couch when I met him. LOL. When we bought a house they immediately were covered with slip covers and then got moved to the kids playroom. Luckily a few years later we were relocated overseas and I had a good excuse to get rid of them permanently!

Thanks for all your comments on colors and fashion cycles.
Pantone's Emerald Green is so bright, clean, and saturated --
the definition of a "jewel tone"?
It is hard for me to imagine how to actually use it in an interior,
except perhaps as a tiny flash in an accessory.

I guess I'm still stuck in the slightly muddier aesthetic of this lovely murky green
featured in this beautiful long-time-favorite living room from Fired Earth:

{{!gwi}}

Another pretty living room
(except for the truly bizarre furniture layout)
that is a little closer to Emerald Green:

{{!gwi}}

I love how the Emerald is used in this room from AD 2009. Just a touch!

I have a really expensive handbag that I bought marked down 3 years ago that's that exact color. I guess I'll look "trendy" for once. Will not be putting it in my house, however.

I guess those who put in emerald green carpet back in the early 90s were just trendsetters!!

deedee99 --

Beautiful use of Emerald Green.
And it even looks good with the earth tones,
at least it does in what appears to be a very large space.
Thanks for sharing.

EEEK. That article that mentions Sephora partnering with Pantone. So we're going to see emerald eye shadow and nail polish? Blush? Lipstick? Or what?

As to decor, there is a shade of green that, when it appears in good emeralds, silk taffeta, and glazed ceramics, has an almost mystical pull for me. Elsewhere, not so much.

Rats - now they took my favorite color and in a few months I'll be sick of it. And to make it worse I bought an emerald green wool jacket at Lord and Taylor in early November.

I was walking past the winter coats and this one called to me in the most seductive, dulcet tone imaginable. Emerald speaks to me the same way that Kashmir sapphire does - it's a mesmerizing attraction that resonates from within.

But I prefer it in small doses, ring size to be exact - or a short jacket. And I don't want to see it everywhere.

Very similar to Sherwin-Williams' color of the year 2012. It was the color of my studio back in the 80s.

Here is a link that might be useful: Argyle

Oh, I love a good green.
But not the one from my Girl Scout uniform in 1964.

Love it! I have a lot of tops that color because it matches my eye's. lol.

E.G. goes with a lot of colors too, so it would be easy to add to a room.

Unless I had a sunroom, I'll always be a jewel tone kind of girl.

I could handle this.

So happy!

I have plenty of greens in my house AND in my wardrobe.
It will be nice to more easily find green things when shopping.

Wouldn't you know it! Just when I'm getting ready to repaint my green cabinets. Sheez!

I'm happy that jewel tones are coming back...I never left them, not really. They have always been my favorites.

What goes around comes around...in my inexperienced youthful home decorating my first house in 1973, I painted the walls above the wainscoting in our black and white tile bathroom almost that exact color, with coordinating bedspread on my black iron bed. After we moved and I learned a bit more about the best colors (or maybe the worst colors) for a bathroom, I felt so sorry for the next owners who probably needed 4 or 5 coats of paint to cover that green. But I loved it and it did look terrific.

Just going on record, right now, that 2014 will be bright royal navy blue.

Something to look forward to, Juliekcmo.

I laughed on learning emerald green's coming IN. The previous octogenarian owners of our ancient little "fishing shack" mobile home in Florida installed very good quality emerald green wall-to-wall. The furniture, which was strictly midwest 1970s (Herculon in autumn leaf colors and plastic veneer tables), had to go, but I won't consider redoing the floors because the carpet is so wonderfully cool looking, so warm looking, and sooo comfy. It coordinates with the deep green estuary and mangroves and provides wonderful noise control too. Plus, and definitely not least, I'm strictly from a pre- "Ughh! Wall-to-wall?? Disgusting!" generation. My very first carpet choice, preparing for our first baby, was emerald/moss green. :)

Now, in 60 years nobody's painted the cheap but real hardwood veneer paneling on the walls. Someone please tell me THAT'S coming back in style. The shack scheme's emerald green, medium-tone wood, white, and art glass inside and green water and white egrets outside. If I'm going to be photographing it for that compendium of what's currently in style, Houzz, I need to know before further choices are made. :)

I have always loved this color, one of the few I never think of as "dated", it's been popular before.
Plantation house 1755
Those historical colors are amazing in their bold uninhibited, unrestrained usage!

I love green, but with this one, my first thought was also of my Girl Scout uniform from decades ago.

Last year, I painted our downstairs guest bathroom an emerald-like dark green. I loved it at the time, until I was choosing greens for the living room and realized that I prefer "mossier" yellower greens. I still like the guest bath, but no longer "love" it. It's fine for a smaller space...kind of like a jewel box effect. But I wouldn't feel comfortable with it in larger doses throughout my home.

Curious why some of these "emeralds" read so turquoise on my screen.
Emerald is certainly a time-honored color--key to the Pre-Raphaelite palette, and one used by Monet. Not as dark as the "Hunter" green used so much in the late eighties/early nineties.

Curious why some of these "emeralds" read so turquoise on my screen.
Emerald is certainly a time-honored color--key to the Pre-Raphaelite palette, and one used by Monet. Not as dark as the "Hunter" green used so much in the late eighties/early nineties.

Here are some great images on House of Turquoise from Friday morphing into the greens......

Here is a link that might be useful: House of Turquoise Friday Dec 7

Anna, I think there is a slight blue tone to the emerald by Pantone.

Pal, I understand Pantone being the elite of colors. This from years of marketing and copy writing colors for businesses. But looking at a google of 2013 colors, they are all over the place. Each paint company seems to have their own take from jewel tones to pastels. Pantone also has 4 different sets of colors for spring, summer, etc. So, where does one really decide what the real deal is?

I love green, but not Pantone's. Have no idea how I would use this in my home without toning it down or going toward a mixture with some blue in it. Guess I'm not one to change colors well.

I think Pantone has too many options for practical application, actually.

Hi Juliekcmo,

Thanks for posting the link to House of Turquoise.
Those are some beautiful green rooms!

I could easily live with this one for a very long time:

{{!gwi}}

Well, now I'm worried. Those pictures with their timid little touches look like they're afraid of bringing back this color, tiptoeing around how to do it. I was thinking it was a little soon for a deep green kitchen cabinets, walls, and, yes, floors redux.

BTW, seems to me emerald has to be the deeper facets, richer, or it's...kelly.

I know I bring this up constantly but part of the reason the Plantation House 1755 color (and others of it's intense saturation were so popular) is that these houses had no lighting.

If they were in the Northeast these rooms were in the dark for a good portion of the year during the times that people occupied the rooms most. If they were in the South, the houses and windows were heavily shaded so the house was not unbearably hot. Subtle colors grayed out to nothing.

Now everybody puts so much artificial lighting in their houses that, unless properly chosen with regards to undertones, and also tempered with less brilliant colors the effect of saturated wallcolor can be a bit garish.

I have a really hard time getting people to refrain from putting recessed lighting in their living rooms and bedrooms, and lighting up as if it's a retail store. It's a personal bias of mine, but I think modern houses are overlit from the ceiling and underlit from lamps. And this is one of the reasons we fear commitment to colors like this.

I could see using an emerald in the victorian. I think when you commit to that depth of color you need a pretty dramatic space to use it in. It would be a tad bit overwhelming in our basement, with 7' ceilings but on the main or family floor where we have 12' to work with, I think it could be very rich.

That said, whenever some picks the "new" color of the decade, year, second, day, month, moment...shall I go on? I avoid it like the plague. So while I could probably have some fun with it...it has now been removed from my decor scheme...until next year when peacock blue will be all the rage :p

Pal -- very interesting and useful information about lighting and color in our modern well-light homes. Thanks!

pal, it's called dimmers...

I like this color just as much as any other color but then I think any color can be used in decor if done smart. I love the fact that it is such a crisp clean color and will work well with white and silver as well as other greens and blues.

Dimmers, right. Most of my client's electricians don't seem to want to put them in. As well as outlets switched to the doorways for table lamps. Builders talk clients out of them all the time in my experience.

Me, I try to avoid the situation entirely by not putting recessed cans into a traditional living space to begin with.

In the house I will be moving into I will be taking out a fair amount of added ceiling lighting that does absolutely nothing for the atmosphere of the house. I don't want to live in a commercial-looking space.

Sorry to hijack.

We have canned light and while I don't use them for ambiance, sometimes I just need a very bright light for something, like cleaning or similar. I don't use them for anything outside of pure functionality. So, for those times, it's nice to have it available. The room with 8 cans also has 5 lamps and a chandelier. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Apologies for continuing the hijack.....

Interesting...I just paid big bucks to have more cans added to my library as it was still too dark given all the wood and dark flooring in there...it's made a huge difference and now the light...all on dimmers...is cast evenly but softly around the room...very cozy, yet can be turned up bright enough for cleaning.

The kitchen in the apartment we are renting is painted the green of the 12/8/12 12.22 post of the living room by francoise.

Not a bad color in the scheme of things but it makes the countertops look pink.

I am wondering about painting it :)

Our stuff really looks like it belongs in this apartment.

Yes, we are renting an apartment. Yes I own a house and I still own the apartment that we actually sleep in at night.
Its a very long and convoluted story, and part of me wants to move into yet another house I have in Methlabautopartsfencing,PA, to get away from it all.

I only want to own one and live in one.

I had walls that color in 1991. Is it already so old its cool? I feel old!

I have an old runner (90's) that is in jewel tones and i love it and still use it. I will buy the emerald green in sweaters and pillows. I love that colour.

Today's Washington Post featured an article about the color of the year too! Green: It's the color of money. It's the icon of eco-friendliness. How can one go wrong?

Here is a link that might be useful: Green is Good

Although I can't imagine Emerald Green adobe walls (omg, would that be bizarre or what?!?), I've already begun seeing clothes and household accessories in this color for Spring. I LOVE it because this color looks great on me. I'll definitely be buying a couple emerald green Spring/Summer sweaters and tops! As for it on furniture, though, it would look too trendy in my home but it sure looks pretty and very refreshing in the pics shown here. I can't wait to see what you all do with it in your homes!
Lynn

I had a feeling it was coming. Each year the classes of my son's high school meet at various homes for pre-prom festivities. They take pictures, eat, gather with parents before getting on their associated buses, etc. Well this past spring when we arrived to take pictures of DS1 and his girlfriend/friends, several of the girls had on emerald green dresses. These are dresses from boutiques that I don't even walk into much less buy from so I knew the color was on its way back into the home scene. Sure enough, I saw pics with emerald green as the feature color in several shelter mags this summer. When I saw the pantone color for 2013 ac few weeks back, I was so impressed with myself I couldn't believe it. I actually called it this past spring. That never happens!!

I've been getting a ton of compliments on my emerald green trench coat that I was *so* chastised about buying as it "wasn't classic". I've worn it for years - more than I ever wore black or khaki ones. I really love the bold tones, but for me, a little goes a long way.

Lynn, this green is a flattering color for me too, & I find it cheerful & fun to wear! I especially like it teamed with navy. It will be a great color for spring & summer!

Louisianna, that's cute! Good for you!

Grlwprls, (it's good to see you!). An emerald trench sounds so pretty, & I can imagine it would be a versatile color for outerwear. Red is the only hue I can't imagine working with it (accept at Christmas time!) Pinks, purples, yellows, navy, black, white, would all look great peeking out from the emerald trench. Good investment if you ask me!

So, at least for fashion (& jewelry) purposes, emerald is a slam dunk!

You know, I shouldn't have said that it would look too trendy in my home, because it sounds like I think it's not good to go with a trend. I love this color and think it would be wonderful in many of your homes . . .just not in mine. Sage Green looks better in this setting with my Southwestern decor.
Mmmmmmm, but paired with Navy and/or White (or other colors, I'm sure), Emerald Green is gorgeous. I really hope some of you Gardenwebbers out there will use it in your homes and post pics for me to drool over.
Lynn

Don't care for it. Its not ugly, but it don't do anything for me. Reminds me of the 80s.

Another year i'll be passing!

Here is a link that might be useful: more