Explorations, Featured Explorations, Retail Design, Technology

In our current economic climate, large home renovation projects are fewer in number. Despite a lack of new building projects, the desire to tinker with the look of our living rooms hasn’t gone away – we just need to be smarter about design. Small changes in furniture, fabric and paint can be as transformative to a space as the tear-down of a wall. But just because the scale of change is smaller doesn’t make it any easier.

Coordinating colors can be completely confounding. Do the curtains match the carpet? Will the backsplash compliment the dishes? Is the bedding in-sync with the bedroom walls? To attempt to answer these difficult décor questions, most consumers rely on collecting piles of fabric swatches, paint chips, magazine clippings and even a favorite plate or bowl to mix and match them until the secret of personal style is finally revealed. Then, the challenge truly begins: braving a series of separate stores across the city to actually find those items that, in theory and from that pile, really do work together to conjure color coordination. Failure is frequent, and usually by a hue or two.

Color Concierge By Crate & Barrel solves this challenge by packing the style skills of a professional interior designer into a single, easy to use iPhone application. With reliable, robust and dynamic brainpower, it uses intelligent logic driven by color theory, an archive of best practices and pattern recognition of user activities to take a photo of a room or item, extract the color palette, refine color harmonies and generate the perfect product combinations. Then, to make shopping easier, it acquires instant product details, displays color and fabric options, receives smart recommendations from other brands that align to your project and personality, and accesses special offers available only through Color Concierge.