The right colour for the right place

The right colour for the right place

Picking the right colour for the right project
Colour is divisive. Colour is personal.

When it comes to picking colours, there are three main archetypes to keep in mind:

Classical builds

Your restoration projects and renovations, your coat of fresh paint, your roads with decades of history embedded into the very foundation of the build. Colours here can go one of two ways – a bright, modern accent to bring the more historical features into stark contrast, or a subtle shade that blends in with the locale.

For Strand Aldwych Road renovation project, the planters were built in natural tones to let the surrounding buildings take pride of place, but included colour in forms of deep planters that would bloom with flowers. This was necessary to encourage people to linger – for years, the location had been a road full of traffic, and at the beginning of its renovation, it was still relatively unknown.

Industrial builds
Factories, wharfs, or former workhouse buildings turned into flats. These benefit from cooler, more modern shades to offset the red brick, wrought iron, and copper. There’s a benefit to this kind of colour in that they tend to wear well, and if the industrial location sees a lot of foot traffic, this will help cut down on maintenance costs in the long run.

When it came to creating seating opportunities at Culham Science Centre, Furnitubes wanted to echo the industry, and the hard work that went into creating the machinery housed at the centre. To that end, slate grey served purposes well, but to add warmth, they offset it with nature timbre in a lustrous finish.

Country builds
Benches in forests, places to stop along pathways, a built environment within the wilderness. These are places surrounded by the exceptional beauty of Britain’s natural landscape, and while theories vary on the best approach, here is a humble consideration: blend in. There is no beauty more put together than the beauty of the wild, and so here, they recommend natural tones and materials, to let the environment shine.

Seating at Princes’ Park, in Eastbourne, looks subtle against the stone walls and the greenery. The focus there is on the gardens and the seaside, with their benches taking a deserved second place. While the bright green sides could be eye-catching in other locations, here they are subtle, the same colour as the grass behind, less noticeable than the golden sand in front.

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Furnitubes International

Furnitubes International

Furnitubes thrive in the outdoors and they are on a mission to get more people outside!

With over 70 years of experience designing and manufacturing street furniture – all of their products are rigorously prototyped and revised to...
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