New appliance hues color outside old lines
When it comes to big appliances, are consumers seeing colorful flashbacks from the 1960s and 1970s?
Gail Vick went for color in her kitchen burgundy when she bought a refrigerator.
Kind of.
Although avocado green and harvest gold haven’t returned to ranges and refrigerators, hues bolder than white, bisque, graphite, black and stainless steel are reappearing in the kitchen and laundry room.
This year Sears introduced blue and burnt orange Kenmore washers and dryers and a light glacier KitchenAid refrigerator exclusive to the department store chain.
Recently Big Chill, based in Boulder, Colo., launched its colorful line of refrigerators featuring the chrome, curves and colors of the 1950s - pink, turquoise, butter yellow and jadeite green are part of the mix.
Gail and Kevan Vick of Lawrence, Kan., went for color in a big way, recently buying a 7-foot-tall red refrigerator. When Gail Vick told her circle of friends about the purchase, they had mixed reactions.
“How awesome!” longtime pal Cindy Dehoff remembers saying. “I’m a red freak, so I thought it was cool. A few thought, ‘Are you crazy?’ or ‘Hmmm . . . well, I don’t know that I would do that.’ ”
The Vicks were going for appliances that fit in with the warm red and gold tones in their kitchen, which opens to the family room. They considered the options. White and bisque, too light. Black, too dark. Stainless steel, too cold-looking and hard to keep clean. Cabinet fronts, too much wood. The bottom line: They were tired of the usual choices.
Gail Vick searched online and found that Viking offered a lot of colors. Although she chose a gray dishwasher and double ovens, she decided on a red refrigerator. Not fire engine red, but more of a burgundy.
At first Vick second-guessed her purchase, because getting a colorful big appliance was an unusual move that harked back to her parents’ generation.
On the day the refrigerator was delivered last September, sunlight hit it, creating a purplish glow. She remembers thinking, “Oh my gosh, did you bring the wrong one?”
But it didn’t take Vick long to love the refrigerator, now the focal point of her kitchen.
Meanwhile, other appliance companies are becoming more daring with color. Dacor is adding pale green and blue double wall ovens to its line of stainless steel this year. The British company Aga offers electric and gas ranges in 15 colors, including two shades of purple: eggplant and lavender.
“People are now feeling emboldened to use color in a bigger way,” says Brian Maynard, a spokesman for KitchenAid, which has had success with its colorful countertop mixers, introducing 10 new hues this year. “Television shows and magazines have given people permission to make their homes more personal. Color does that.”
Red is the top-selling Big Chill refrigerator color, says Orion Creamer, product designer and co-owner of the Colorado company.
Yellow and light blue are close seconds.
So far most customers looking to add retro chic to their kitchens are from California and New York.
Still, the general population seems ready for an alternative to neutral large appliance colors, says Creamer, based on sales that have steadily grown since the colorful refrigerators were introduced in the summer. People have started requesting colors the company doesn’t currently offer.
“But not avocado or harvest gold,” he says. “We won’t be coming out with these anytime soon.”
Other manufacturers are waiting to see how Sears fares with its Kenmore washers and dryers before introducing bolder colors to their appliance lineups. Even Sears is cautious about adding colorful dishwashers and oven ranges because “the kitchen is a public space,” says spokesman Larry Costello.
Small colorful appliances are successful because they’re mainly quick pick-me-ups, says Vicki Matranga, designer programs coordinator for the International Housewares Association.
“People buy blenders as sculpture, but their decor doesn’t rely on that color,” she says. “People invest in large appliances because they’re going to last a long time, so they’re going to go with what’s safe. They’ll be more daring if they have a disposable income.”
But Sears sees possibilities for the laundry room - a behind-closed-doors yet rising-star area in the home.
Research showed that 70% of the people Sears surveyed were tired of the sterile, white laundry room, which has moved up from the basement and into the master bedroom suite in new houses.
Kenmore, like other appliance companies, chose the hues it wanted based on the expertise of color forecasters such as Pantone and the car industry.
Champagne - beige amplified with metallic chips like paint jobs on luxury sedans-accounts for 47% of the new line’s washer and dryer sales. Pacific blue makes up 45% and the burnt orange Sedona, 8%. More than 10,000 units have been sold so far.
For now, colorful large appliances are definitely a niche market: Neutrals are still the norm in stores, and adding color sometimes commands a price tag of $100 to $200 more because appliances must be put through a special paint process. Although Viking offers more than 10 vivid hues, they account for only 1% to 2% of the company’s appliance sales, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Industry experts say adding color is simply a marketing tool, attracting attention and getting people to replace their appliances more often as they tire of once-trendy shades.
“The stainless steel market is still growing,” says Diane Ritchey, editor of Home Appliance Magazine, a consumer publication. “In Europe they’ve been hip to buying blue stoves and other colorful appliances for years. But the biggest segment of the U.S. population is comfortable with what’s out there already.”
Kitchen designers say most people redoing their kitchens are going with stainless appliances or covering them with cabinet fronts.
Most are reluctant to use colorful big stoves and refrigerators, fearing they will soon be outdated.
In the 1950s, the popular colors were turquoise and pink. In the 1960s and 1970s, brown, avocado and gold were all the rage. The 1980s and early 1990s saw cobalt blue, wine and hunter green in limited doses.
“Color is a trend that’s come and gone several times in the appliance industry, but rarely do the palettes of those eras come back,” says Denise Manu, regional manager of Roth Concept Center, a kitchen design store in Lenexa, Kan. “I bet people who bought a hunter green range in 1992 don’t love it now.”
In the meantime, if you would like to introduce more color into your kitchen, you can give your fridge a face-lift.
If you choose to paint it, paint stores carry appliance epoxies in the aerosol section. A 12-ounce spray can costs about $5. Test spray on cardboard. Follow manufacturers’ instructions.
Avoid painting stoves - they discolor from heat exposure.
Check out the link!
Stainless not good enough for ya? Try a custom paint job instead.
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