Paint maker unveils 2027 Color of the Year at High Point as retail spaces push monochromatic and high-contrast palettes

A green-led 2027 palette enters the wood-finish conversation

AkzoNobel Wood Coatings will showcase Soulful Sage, its 2027 Color of the Year, alongside complementary wood finishes at its Global Color and Design Center during High Point Market. The announcement positions a muted, herbal green at the centre of the brand's next cycle of finish recommendations, giving cabinetmakers, millwork shops and interior specifiers a named anchor colour to coordinate stain and lacquer systems around.

Retail interiors lean on monochrome restraint and high-contrast accents

A Thessaloniki flagship for the label peace + chaos translates the brand's creative duality into a physical space, contrasting monochromatic minimalism with vibrant patterns and high-energy materials to mirror the balance between stillness and disruption in fashion. The treatment offers a working example of how a single-colour zone can be sharpened by an adjacent high-contrast one, a pairing designers can test in mood boards before committing to finishes, lighting and signage.

Light, surface and city frames colour decisions beyond the paint chip

Italian photographer Giovanna Silva reflects on the changing spaces of club culture, from Italian discotheques to improvised contemporary dance floors, tracking how light and surface continue to redefine colour reads after dark. In a separate urban project, an Apostolopoulos Tasoulis masterplan threads Thessaloniki's layered historic centre into an expandable pedestrian network held together by a neutral urban skin intended to unify more than seventy monuments and archaeological sites. Both projects underline that named colours rarely arrive alone; ambient light, surrounding neutrals and architectural context shape the final read, which is why planning a palette starts with the room, not the swatch.

A Color Contrast Checker helps quantify how neutral and accent zones sit against signage and wayfinding before they reach site.

Print, product and front-end colour workflows still need translating

None of the retail or architectural projects were designed with screen-first colour in mind, so any palette derived from these references must be remapped for digital use. Designers pulling a sage or neutral sample from a wood-finish display will still face the routine task of converting RGB captures into CMYK for printed collateral and signage. An RGB to CMYK Converter and a print-focused walkthrough such as Convert RGB to CMYK in Clip Studio for Print-Ready Art keep digital paint chips and paper output within the same conversation as the High Point showcase.

What to watch through the rest of High Point Market

Practitioners who treat High Point Market as the finish-and-furniture anchor of the year should plan a follow-up against the next 2027 colour announcements from other paint vendors and the broader interior-design press, since one vendor's named colour rarely ships without competitors answering it. Build a shortlist of sage-leaning finishes against existing wood tones, test monochrome-plus-high-contrast zone pairings in mood boards, and log the named wood-finish systems on display so procurement has a paper trail before samples are requested.