VOICES FROM THE TOP

Valspar 2022 Color of the Year, “Orchid Ash”.

Color Inspiration and Solutions

By Sue Kim, Director of Color Marketing for Valspar Paint (part of The Sherwin-Williams Company)

As Director of Color Marketing for Valspar, my main responsibility is to create a strategic vision for color: providing inspirational content and color solutions for our consumers, making the color selection process easier for all their DIY needs. At Valspar, we are known for our breadth of color offering, and being a leader in color expertise and trend forecasting.

For over a decade, we have forecasted our annual trend color forecast with 12 trend-worthy, forward-thinking Colors of the Year. We understand that color is an individualistic experience, and everyone has different styles and aesthetic preferences. Providing 12 Colors of the Year gives our consumers a range of options to select and pull inspiration from to ensure the color is right for their homes.

Our Color Marketing team is passionate about color trend forecasting; continuously researching consumer lifestyle trends throughout the year. These trends set the landscape on how home design is shifting and evolving, which affects how we incorporate color into our personal spaces. Always thinking ahead, we provide color insights to our teams 2-5 years in advance. The ability to navigate and anticipate changes has helped to position our brand as one of the leaders in color insights and inspiration. Our process for researching color trends is not a linear path but is quite fluid and ever-evolving. Attending home décor and furniture tradeshows, observing product and home appliance launches and color shifts, and even keeping up to date on the latest fashion and pop culture news gives us a holistic look at the evolution of color. This allows us to connect the dots and align the color similarities to provide a forward-thinking, on-trend color forecast that our consumers will fall in love with.

Living room, Interior design, Property, Furniture, Plant, Comfort, Table, Orange, Wood, Rectangle

Valspar 2022 Color of the Year, "Grey Suit".

Our color inspiration and solutions don’t stop there. We recently updated our in-store shopping experience at Lowe’s by expanding our color offering to over 1,500 colors. This updated color palette consists of classic Valspar shades our consumers know and love but also includes new hues that will soon become fan favorites. Color and home design trends are evolving, and we are excited to add colors to our cohesive palette to reflect the direction color is moving. The new palette is thoughtfully laid out in an updated color display as well as in color brochures, making the in-store color shopping experience easy to navigate.

As consumers rely heavily on their smartphones for shopping, it is often used to navigate in-store to provide quick solutions. This is no different when navigating our color display in-store where we provide QR codes to directly take consumers to our website, providing additional inspiration content and color solutions for their homes.

Bed frame, Furniture, Property, Blue, Comfort, Cabinetry, Azure, Wood, Building, Purple

Valspar 2022 Color of the Year, "Mountain River".

Understanding that our consumers’ needs have shifted over the past few years, we are proud to have updated our brand’s website — providing easy online color navigation to help the consumer select their favorite colors with the click of a button. A consumer can shop by color family and undertone, and narrow down the selection to some of our most-loved shades. Once their favorite colors have been selected, consumers can get paint chips shipped directly to their homes for free. Lighting and décor can affect the way a color appears in a space, oftentimes showing differently than online or in a store. The ability to get free paint chips shipped directly to a consumer’s home makes the color shopping process seamlessly fit into everyone’s busy lifestyles and allows the consumer to really see how the paint will display. Simplifying the shopping process even further, our homepage directly links to Lowe’s website where you can select your paint product in your favorite color and pick it up in-store.

If our inspirational content and online shopping process still aren’t enough for some consumers, we are happy to offer a free virtual online color consultation. This is one of our most popular and favorite color tools, used by consumers when they don’t know where to start in the color selection journey. Through a quick questionnaire and a picture of the project, our team of color experts can help provide advice for any home project.

Interior design, Brown, Furniture, Property, Window, Couch, Wood, Comfort, Orange, Rectangle

Valspar 2022 Color of the Year, "Sunset Curtains".

At Valspar, we are excited to provide a range of colorful inspirations and solutions for our consumers. We’re focused on making the color selection process fun, quick and easy so our consumers can get their job done and enjoy their finished product.

Sue Kim, Director of Color Marketing for Valspar Paint, has a passion for seeing color through graphic, product, and interior design. She started her career with Sherwin-Williams in 2008, and prior to her work with Sherwin, Sue was a lead industrial designer focusing on trendy office products. In addition to building a new in-store and digital color shopping experience, Sue is responsible for the company's annual color trend forecasting.

*All photos courtesy of Valspar.