Coatings World - May 2009

International Coatings Scene

EUROPE

BY SEAN MILMO

EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT

MILMOCW@RODPUB.COM

Examining color trends
Pigment
producers at
the European
Coatings
Show
displayed
new effect
pigments
technology.

Pigment producers have been expanding the technical scope of their effect colors when hard economic times could be making the upbeat look less attractive to consumers.

They were displaying their eye-catching innovations at the European Coatings Show (ECS) in Nuremberg, Germany, last month with the aim that they could be used on products for market launch beyond 2010/11. But they may have had the misfortune to be presenting the results of several years of development work when the world is being plunged deep into a recession

The new pigments introduced a broader range of colors combined with glitter and glimmer effects to give coatings a greater depth and visual appeal. The additional excitement they provide, however, may not match the mood of sections of the public struggling with the impact of the economic downturn.

“As the economic crisis continues into 2010, we expect to see the consumer look for calm and reassurance in the home,” said Justine Fox, creative director at Global Color Research, London.

He believes that due to the recession there will be changes in color trends so that softer and quieter colors will be more prominent. “The blue area of the color spectrum becomes more dominant and we expect to see a lot more ‘red-based’ or cooler blues entering the market,” Fox added.

Nonetheless metallic effects, which have been gaining a higher profile in the fashion world, will at the same time become more widespread. “Soft gold and copper are expected to become more important as metal finishes on the most prosaic of low-cost household goods,” said Fox.

Consequently the emphasis by high performance pigment producers on the mixing of

colors with metallic and pearlescent effects is consistent with a need among people to remain hopeful about the future.

“People want optimism but they want to be realistically optimistic so they want colors and effects which are not too bright and conspicuous,” said Jill Lawrence, head of JLD International, a London-based design company. “Combinations of color and iridescence remain popular because they move products off the shelves. But people seem to prefer them in accessories and small items or as a detail in larger products.”

Paul Brown, automotive technical manager at the coatings application center of Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Basle, whose acquisition by BASF was completed in early April, believes that the new range of the company’s effect colors introduced at the ECS could initially be more popular among buyers of electronic products than of automobiles.

“People will play safe by sticking to more conservative colors when buying cars because they will be thinking about the second-hand value of the vehicle,” he said in an interview at the exhibition. “But they will be more adventurous when buying a mobile phone or other electronic device. They will then want more excitement in the colors. When iPods first entered the market, they had classical colors like silver, white and black but now they are much more colorful because their appearance has become much more personalized.”

Ciba has developed systems of multi-lay-ered coatings mainly comprised of colored or metallic base coats with transparent top coats containing nanoparticles of effect pigments. These give an extra depth to the coating as well as optical variations depending on the ambient light and the viewing angle.