Green Is In The Limelight For Home Furnishings

Seeing green? That arresting shade of citrus that zipped through the fashion world is heading for a living room or bedroom near you.

Learn to live with the limelight.

Green is the color of the moment in home furnishings, whether in jewellike translucent plastic, glossy metal or slubbed silk. It’s being tagged with labels from kiwi to pistachio to lemon lime.

“This color will define the decade. It’s everywhere,” says Margaret Walch, associate director of the Color Association of the United States, based in New York. Walch, whose job it is to predict national color trends, says acid green’s continuing entrenchment in consumer culture, from sporting goods to computer screens to graphic design, makes it a logo for the 1990s.

Over the past several years, this chartreuse on steroids has moved from the avant garde to fashion’s mainstream. First spotted on retro neon miniskirts, it moved effortlessly to Brooks Brothers striped silk ties and timeless Coach handbags - the company introduced “lime” leather this season. And what would you imagine is the color of Envy, Gucci’s latest perfume?

Now home can have zest too. Spring’s green tide has washed over scalloped paper lampshades, iridescent silk pillows and copies of 1940s metal porch chairs. At Williams-Sonoma, a heavy-duty British four-slot toaster now comes in bright green, its hefty $359 price tag a sign the color is here to stay a while.

Remodeling? Sherwin-Williams has just brought out Low Key Lime, Avant Garde Green and Citronette paints. Formica Corp. introduced a clearly citrus French Green laminate at the National Kitchen and Bath show in Chicago. Want your nails to match? L’Oreal has brought out Key Lime nail enamel for the truly hip.

The garden is not left out in the cold. The March issue of Martha Stewart Living offered a lavish spread on chartreuse in the garden: lady’s mantle and hellebore are mentioned for their attention-getting properties.

At her own shingled East Hampton home, Stewart has used chartreuse in an ornamental fashion, in iron urns planted in yellow-green licorice plant (Helichrysum petiolatum “Limelight”) and terra-cotta pots spilling over in golden-green creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia “Aurea”).

After all, in feng shui, the ancient Oriental study of how people are affected by their environment, green is associated with growth and nature. Green in a room signifies spring’s fresh new beginnings, and the color can create a restful and calm mood, according to feng-shui experts.

Retailers are obviously glad to see green.

“It’s got to be the most popular color in the country right now,” says Judy George, who heads Domain, the Boston-based furnishings shops. “It reminds us of green apples. We’re calling it summer chartreuse.”

Whatever the reference, and whether it shows up on a tennis ball or on the side of a motorcycle helmet, this is not a color you can ignore. “The intensity of the green is so well transmitted on computer monitors. It has a shocking appeal,” says David Hammond, vice president and home furnishings fashion director for the Bloomingdale’s chain, which is stocking citrus-green Filofaxes, neon glassware and patent leather ice buckets. “It has a lot of vibrancy to it. It’s fun. It’s active. It means youth.”

Moving from fashion to home, the color has lost none of its intensity but has gained respectability.

However, just as you don’t just plop a chartreuse sports jacket on top of your gray flannels, it takes guts to use lime-green curtains or lollipopgreen kitchen counters. Adding a color that strong to a room in anything more than a coaster could be over the top.

Designer Mary Douglas Drysdale, who has a lime bedroom in her country farmhouse, calls the color “one of the punctuation marks of this decade.” Drysdale says the hue takes some lobbying with clients. “It requires a little character to be willing to say, ‘I like this color no matter what you may think.’ ” How long will green rule? Nobody knows, but keep your eye on ice blue.