Nowadays if you plan to spruce up your home with a new coat of paint, you don't go to the store and ask for blue or yellow or white paint. Now you have an unlimited number of shades to choose from, with names like Deep Space, Halogen Yellow and Cookie Monster.

Every year at about this time the manufacturers announce the newest paint trends for the year. Benjamin Moore recently announced that from deep smoky wine to wildly pumped up fuchsia, purple promises to be a predominant colour in home decor in 2011. Most manufacturers present their colours in palette groupings. In Benjamin Moore's case, the palettes for next year are Soulful (including Wasabi, Amulet and Etrusan); Spirited (with Grape Green, Wrought Iron and Lucerne); and Dreamy (Gray Mirage, Genesis White and Kendall Charcoal).

Our favourite paint colour names for this year, so far, come from Beauti-Tone, the paint manufactured for the Home Hardware chain in Burford, Ont. Its Rock & Bold palette includes names like Rolling Stone (it's blue); Going Gaga (also blue) and I Got You Beige. And we can't resist mentioning Crystal Blue Persuasion, Billie Jean, Blond Ambition and Greyful Dead. Beauti-Tone also has a new Sesame Street collection with palette names Cookie Monster, Elmo, Oscar the Grouch and more.

Paint company CIL declared that 2010's Colour of the Year is blue. The Colour of the Year is an airy and opportunistic blue that symbolizes igniting horizons, creating new beginnings, renewed energy and a positive dynamic, the company says. It evokes an image of vast skies, breezy ozone freshness and the energy and essentiality of water. Given these associations, along with the fact that this is a receding colour, it will always create a sense of space.

Home improvement retailer Rona said this year, given the economic instability spreading across the world, a greater need for calm, comfort and well-being has emerged, which is reflected in our choice of decor and, more particularly, colours. Nevertheless, in trying to remain positive about the future, we continue to pair stylish, vibrant and decisively modern colours with neutral tones.

Budget conscious decorating will combine with individual style to drive 2011 paint colour trends, says the Paint Quality Institute, which is owned by The Dow Chemical Company. The U.S.-based institute's paint and colour expert, Debbie Zimmer, says, "There's no escaping the state of the economy, even for homeowners who want to beautify their homes. Rather than diving into large-scale renovation projects, in the coming year consumers will search for inexpensive ways to freshen and update their homes. Many will conclude that painting is the perfect solution."

She says that neutral paint colours "provide versatility and allow homeowners to quickly change the look of a room just by adding a few new accessories, without spending time and money to remodel or repaint again. This is the ultimate in practical remodelling, and the time is ripe for it."

The institute suggests that higher paint sheens and metallic finishes are on the radar of consumers to bring a little sparkle to some rooms. "Gloss can subtly create a brighter, more upbeat mood in a home, but at the same time, it adds style and pizzazz," says Zimmer.

PPG Pittsburg Paints introduced four new palettes for 2010/2011, including Pink City in which "a vibrant, profound Indian pink and a spicy rusty orange play against an off-white linen. A stony gray and a chocolate brown combine to reflect urbanity, masculinity and a grounding place for the rest of the palette."

The company's Zest palette offers "a high energy yellow + a pure white + a steely gray + a sleek black = an unapologetic colour theme that leaves boring far behind."

Common themes seen in most offerings are natural "eco-colours" and an Asian influence that is producing brighter and stronger colours. You may ask yourself, "Who decides all these colour trends, anyway?" It's like there's a bunch of people sitting around a room deciding what's going to be hot next year. Well, that's exactly what happens.

The Color Marketing Group (CMG) is an international non-profit association of 1,100 designers who meet twice a year to forecast the colour directions for the next one to three years. After the trends are determined, the members then create products that reflect those colours. The association represents many industries including consumer goods, health care, transportation, fashion and commercial uses.

Despite what the latest trends are, there's a good chance you don't want to paint your entire house in Stinky Shoes (but if you do, it's from the Beauti-Tone Oscar the Grouch collection). To help wade through the colour choices available, there are many excellent online tools to help.

Sico Paints offers the Virtual Decorator (http://www.sico.ca/en/Extras_Decorateur.asp ), a free online five-step process that allows you to choose from almost 1,700 colours. It provides a print-out of the colour choices, products and sheens along with the amount of paint you need and your closest retailer.

The Virtual Painter (http://www.cil.ca/ ) from CIL enables users to select colours and drag them onto the walls in virtual rooms to see how they'll look. It helps users create a colour scheme or the right mood.

Benjamin Moore recently introduced the Ben Colour Capture app for iPhones. Users take a photo with their iPhone of anything "that has the perfect colour that you've been looking for", and the app provides the closest paint colour match from the company's palettes, along with co-ordinating colours. All the selections can then be saved for future reference.

Published: October 26, 2010

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Jim Adair is editor of REM: Canada's Real Estate Magazine, a business publication for real estate agents and brokers. He has been writing about Canadian real estate, home building and renovation issues for more than 30 years. You can contact Jim at .