Contemporary style is often daring with furniture and built-ins colours and surprisingly conservative with window treatments.

The stripes and patchwork for instance are used everywhere from rugs to furniture, to upholstery.

 

Saturated tones of red, blue even purple and are accepted and part of the contemporary aesthetic.

 

This kitchen borrows the baroque blue and reinterprets it.

Green is greener on white.

Red will always be “in”.

In contrast, white is is the dominant colour of choice for window treatments.

Its simplicity is intrinsically modern. Not much white in nature if you think of it. Early modernism used white as a reaction to the multi-colour of traditional styles. It stuck. Even now white is seen as a contemporary colour, borrowed sometimes by other styles. It gained a “classical” connotation, but that is another conversation.

From folding fabric panels to roller blinds to sliding fabric panes and the more conventional sheers, white is predominant.

It blends with the often-light walls and acts as a canvas to the more colourful upholstery or furniture pieces. Natural tones are rare, but sometimes do quite well in the mix, like in this modern loft below.