Pottery Barn's bold new move

Have you seen the latest Pottery Barn catalog? Usually, you can expect to see pretty tame designs and colors when it comes to this middle of the road, everyman store. Lots of beige, tan, brown, khaki, cream...neutrals. Pottery Barn has honed a "look" that is very identifiable- safe, kinda generic, nice, but not too nice. You know you've seen it.
They've teamed up with Benjamin Moore to bring their customers a "palette" every season to go along with their furniture and accessories. Which I find rather humorous, considering most of their pieces are so neutral to begin with, they go with just about anything. But I digress.

Spring 2008 selected color palette

Their latest catalog boasts bold, vibrant colors. Very cool for those of us who eat color for breakfast, but I'm wondering what their customer base will think...

This season's selections are intense and bold, a rather big leap from the traditional Pottery Barn look. Talk about bright, rather saturated colors! I can certainly see myself painting a room deep eggplant, but the general population who shops at PT? I'm not so sure.

Anyways, what struck me the most was that Pottery Barn specifies particular paint colors for the rooms they've put together in the catalog. So, you can go out and get that exact color for your own home. Which sounds great, in theory. But think about this: how many times have you looked at a color in the store, then brought it home to find it's completely wrong? I have a friend who fell in love with Restoration Hardware paint colors-she thought they looked so clean, and spa-like.

image source

But alas, those colors on her walls at home looked dingy and grey. Why? One word-lighting. In the store, there were fluorescent lights, but in our homes, we generally have incandescent and natural lighting. So, there's no way that color in the beautifully-lit room of that printed catalog is going to look the same on your wall. Trust me on this one.

Pottery Barn images source