Dare to Decorate With ‘The World’s Ugliest Color’

See how this hue can actually look quite handsome inside your home

Courtesy of: Jennifer Ott

You may have caught the story about how “the world’s ugliest color” had been identified and was being used on cigarette packaging in Australia to discourage smoking. To find this hue, the Australian government hired a market research firm to interview the public to see which colors people find the most repellent.

The winner? Pantone 448C, shown here. It’s essentially a dark brown with a dab of olive green. Among the finalists were lime green, white, beige, dark gray and mustard.

Now, I tend to believe that there are no ugly colors. Whether a single hue looks terrific or awful often depends on the context in which it’s viewed. Factors such as the other colors it’s used with, lighting, materials, textures and sheen all play a huge role in influencing our perception of a color.

So as a lover of all the colors, I decided to take up the challenge to see if I could find successful uses of these so-called ugly colors in homes.

Here’s a dark brown wall color that appears, from my monitor anyway, to have a slight green undertone, but I would in no way call this ugly. Quite the opposite. It’s a deep, rich hue that brings a warm and cozy vibe to this luxurious master bedroom. Sure, I could imagine a space in which this color would not be appealing, but that’s true of all colors. And the reason it works well here is that there’s a pleasing mix of materials, many of them with a luxurious feel, as well as dashes of compatible colors, such as red and white, that pull it all together.

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