Beyond Blue Paint: Paint Color Gets Grapey

Life poses many daunting existential questions, none more vexing than this one: what color should I paint the bedroom, living room or bath? You've been there before, standing in the paint store squinting at color swatches, wondering whether that gray is too dark (looks like a funeral home!) or if the coral is a tad too pink (way too Barbie!).

Enter the professional color trend forecasters, like Pantone and the Color Marketing Group. You might not have heard of them before, but these are the folks who help us and the design pros decipher whether we're having a dusky rose moment, or perhaps that mystical mauve is right for our gloomy zeitgeist. How they reach these conclusions is, uh, a bit murky. Pantone relies on "a team of leading visionaries" while CMG polls its members in design and industry, which is probably why you bought that terracotta orange washing machine a few years back.

So what are experts recommending as the right color to get us through these recession-racked times?