Sherwin-Williams Gone Wild

So the fourth and final 2009 palette from Sherwin-Williams is something they're calling Techno Color and I have to say it's one of the more daring palettes I've ever seen them do.  For a company around whose neutrals I've built a career, there is nothing neutral about this palette. I mean, look at the inspiration photo. Techno Color is bold and bright and somehow environmentally friendly. I predict that the colors in this palette will show up all over the place and I think they'll stay around the longest out of the four palettes I've reviewed in the last couple of days. Anybody want to venture an opinion?

Gauntlet Gray

Hep Green

Zany Pink

Ruby Shade

Reflecting Pool

Zircon

More Design Pro LED Lighting from Kichler

Since I wrote about Kichler's Design Pro LED under cabinet lighting yesterday, I need to mention it one more time before I move onto another topic. The lighting I was talking about yesterday is LED in the form of a box and that's all well and good. I'll take under cabinet lighting in its box form any day over what I usually see. What I usually see is the Home Depot halogen puck light.

Puck lights don't work well as under cabinet lighting because the super bright halogen light isn't diffused enough and you end up with a series of spotlights illuminating your counter. It looks sloppy and still leaves too many shadows in the area where you prepare food. Add to that the amount of heat kicked off by halogen bulbs and I have to wonder why bother?

Well, Kichler re-imagined the puck light and came up with something they're calling a disc light. The light produced by the discs has the same warm quality as the light emitted from the rest of the Design Pro LEDs and are a great solution for a space where box lights won't work.

The Design Pro LED Discs are 3/8" of an inch thick if you can believe that, and each disc comes with embedded installation screws and connection wiring already coiled inside. Features like these are an electrician's dream come true and they take the guesswork out of a retrofit. Kichler's Design Pro LED under cabinet lighting sounds like a winner to me. I'm using them in my next job, that's for sure.

Design Pro LED under cabinet lighting from Kichler

I've always had mixed feelings about under-cabinet LED lighting. I love the fact that it's incredibly energy efficient and produces almost no heat. I love how small and bright they are and I'm fascinated by the very nature of LEDs. I mean, things that work without moving parts excite some part of my brain that I've never been able to explain.

However, when it comes time to living with them at home or specifying them for a client I have always balked. Sure, they last forever and they're super-efficient, but the light they produce is the bluest white light I've ever seen. It's worse than what comes out of a fluorescent tube. Man, nothing looks good under light so harsh.

But our great pals at Kichler have come up with something that may make me an LED convert after all. LED technology is evolving quickly and Kichler has harnessed that evolution in the form of their Design Pro LED Under cabinet lights.

This is what typical LED under cabinet lighting does to food. Ugh. I looks like the hideous food photography in a 1970s cookbook.

See what I mean?

Well, Kichler's changing all of that with their new Design Pro Line of under cabinet lighting. Check out the effect of their softer light:

Very nice and no more Betty Crocker flashbacks!

Add to the pleasing light how easily these lights can be installed and how long they last and I think they have a winner. Under cabinet lighting is all but mandatory in a new kitchen and retrofitting an older kitchen with it is a money-saving way to squeeze out a couple more years. I can't imagine making dinner in a room without it and with the advent of these warmer LEDs, it may be time for me to swap out my halogens. Track them down, you won't regret it.

Here's another Sherwin-Williams color palette for 2009

Third in Sherwin-Williams' 2009 is something they're calling Local Momentum. The colors in Local Momentum are intended to invoke a renewed appreciation for a scaled-down way of life dependant on things found close to home. I'm not so sure about that, but this palette really sings to me. I'd find a replacement for Mesa Tan if it were up to me, but the remaining five colors more and make up for Mesa Tan's shortcomings. So all of the colors in Local Momentum are:

Wool Skein

Black Fox

Lemon Verbena

Grandiose

Aqua-Sphere

Mesa Tan

Notice that in the photo at the top of the page, it's not just wall colors they're talking about. All this talk of color palettes is always about color in general, not just paint colors. Tune in tomorrow for the last palette in this series that I'm calling "Sherwin-Williams Gone Wild."

NEWSFLASH! Home Depot Expo is going going gone.

Home Depot just announced that it is closing its remaining 34 Expo Centers. From Marketwatch:

Before the opening bell, Home Depot (HD:23.02, +1.30, +6.0%) said that Expo has "not performed well financially and is not expected to anytime soon. Even during the recent housing boom, it was not a strong business."

And, it has "weakened significantly as the demand for big-ticket design and decor projects has declined in the current economic environment."

Over the next two months, the company will close 34 Expo Design Center stores, five YardBIRDS stores, two Design Center stores and a bath remodeling business known as HD Bath, with seven locations. All told, that will result in the loss of about 5,000 jobs. "Streamlining" some support functions will cost another 2,000 positions for a total of about 2% of the company's workforce.

This is a pretty big deal. I never felt particularly threatened by them, not did I think those stores stocked anything that couldn't be bought less expensively from a professional expert in design. But still, that's a lot of people thrown into the bread lines. Times is hard gang, times is hard indeed.