The color grey is a reference to ambiguity, speculation, and nebulous deconstruction without solution.
—Philip Bachman
For a town that sees blue sky almost 250 days per year, Evergreen looks awfully gray.
It’s not the weather. It’s the trend. Some would say full-blown mania. That least piquant of colors is red hot, and has been since 2010, more or less, when it seized the throne from buttery white Magnolia. Gray launched its coup from behind closed doors, but quickly came to command America’s living spaces inside and out. If there’s a bright spot among the bland, it’s that gray comes in more than 150 tedious shades, a dizzying kaleidoscope of drab with unhelpful names like Moonquake (wet newspaper), Double Click (Hoover Dam) and Mint Condition (Norway rat).
Before we explore this feckless phenomenon further, let’s get a couple of things straight. “Grey” and “gray” are both acceptable for all purposes, foreign and domestic. “Grey” is favored by mutton-boiling crumpet-munchers. On this side of the pond we like “gray.”
“Gray is sorrow without tears.”
And just so we’re all on the same page, Webster’s defines gray as being “of a color intermediate between black and white” and “without interest or character; dull and nondescript.” As a literary device, gray is the color of melancholy, of indecision, of gloom, of the tomb. Gray befits the weary, the dispirited, the detached, the defeated. Gray is sorrow without tears.
That’s not to say gray hasn’t had its promoters. Aristotle said gray alone is suitable for serious men, and that brighter colors are for women and children. A product of the more gender-tolerant 18th Century, Goethe condemned warm colors as appealing only to children and animals, naming gray as the sober choice for the modern sophisticate. The gray worsted suit has been a staid symbol of corporate conformity since the 1950s. Gandalf was gray (Grey, actually), and nobody ever called him dull.
The psychology of color has been exhaustively researched. Defenders of gray tout the non-color’s calming aspect. It sedates, rather than excites. On the other end of the spectrum, psychologists find that while gray impacts the mood less than other colors, its general effect is to depress. Brighter colors, by contrast, elevate and energize.
Design-wise, gray wears a blush of the contemporary, the urbane, the mature. Gray is relentlessly neutral, a passionless canvas upon which more expressive themes can be imposed without fear of delight. It says nothing, means nothing, does nothing. Gray is boring on purpose. If that sounds almost legit, it still seems strange that people have taken to gray so warmly, considering that it leaves most people cold.
We like everything better than gray. With a 42 percent favorite rating, blue is the color to beat, followed by green at 22 percent, purple at 20 percent, red at 9 percent, and yellow at 6 percent. Only 2 percent of Americans call gray their favorite color, and 16 percent declare it their least favorite. More than 80 percent place it in their bottom three. By all rights, gray should be about as popular as bilge water. And yet here we are.
“Only 2 percent of Americans call gray their favorite color, and 16 percent declare it their least favorite.”
Paint manufacturers report that gray paint sales significantly exceeded previous trends. In some areas, up to 70 percent of homes wear gray, and more than 70 percent of cars on the road are gray, black or white. According to Zillow, a couple coats of Quiet Despair can raise a home’s selling price by up to $2,500. Interestingly, a recent survey of 1,000 homeowners revealed that while 56 percent of them painted their home gray, about 40 percent immediately disliked the vibe, 6 percent so much so that they quickly buried it under pigments more palatable.
If you’re wondering where this concrete-colored contagion started, it wasn’t in a government laboratory in Wuhan, although that’s not a bad guess. The dominant theory is that Millennial Gray is a generational reaction to the undisciplined shabby-chic aesthetic beloved by Boomers. Gen Y, we’re asked to believe, are subconsciously imposing Scandinavian minimalist order on the disorganized décor of their childhoods.
Others suggest that gray is an instinctive human response to chaos. Beset by an increasingly baffling and bellicose world, we’re bundling ourselves in subdued, non-confrontational cocoons. Corollary to that is the notion that gray has become the unofficial color of Kumbaya—that in these turbulent times of political and social division, we’re building bridges with slate and cinderblock.
Why-ever we’re doing it, we’re doing a ridiculous amount of it, which makes people without enough to worry about worry that the Gray Wave is washing away our collective sense of individuality. Their time could be more productively spent worrying about the return of bell bottoms, because consumer data suggest that gray’s hey-day is yesterday. Last year, manufacturers report, and for the first time in more than a decade, shades of gray fell to second place, bested by… well… beige. Okay, so it’s not Atomic Flamingo, but it’s an encouraging baby step toward a more colorful Colorado.
Ultimately, rescue from the dreary clutches of ash, lead and pigeon will come from an unlikely band of heroes. Gen Z is coo-coo for colors, especially shiny ones, the bolder the better. Tinged with nostalgia for that simpler time before social media, the Centennials’ cheerfully retro palette paints both a stark rejection of their parents’ visual austerity and a hopeful picture of brighter days to come. Gen Z fave Magentaverse topped Pantone’s pop chart last year, and expect to see a lot of Cyber Lime in ’25.
There will always be a place for gray, of course. We need gray to paint Navy frigates and pictures of elephants. But we have exalted gray far above its virtue, and it’s past time we started illustrating Evergreen in colors more reflective of its sunny spirit.
Of all God’s gifts to sighted man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.
—John Ruskin
