A new category of colors perhaps? Cars for the last couple of years have been coming out with a muddy, grungy sort of color palette. In contrast to the more colorful, Easeter-y pastel colors, I’ve been calling this new palette of colors mudstels. They’re usually in shades of blue, green, grey, and tan. There are a few rusty oranges out there, but I’ve yet to see any red, purple, or yellows in the series.
One might call these new mudstel colors a tone, but instead of adding grey to the primary colors and variations thereof, it’s almost as if they’re mixing in a muddy brownish gray. They seem low value and medium chroma to me. Perhaps I should delve into some color theory to better categorize these?
In any case, I’m seeing a lot of them on the road over the past couple of years. Some seem reminiscent of the sorts of industrial colors one would have seen in public schools in the 1940s and 1950s on 20 gauge steel furnishings.
