Architect Róisín Murphy joined Drivetime to discuss how pink hues are trending in interior design ahead of the release of the Barbie film, and why it’s giving us the dopamine kick we’re craving. Listen back above.
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Ahead of the release of Greta Gerwig’s eagerly anticipated Barbie movie, dropping on 21 July, Barbiecore has dominated everything from fashion and beauty, to food and drink. Living in Barbie’s world has never been easier, especially as the trend for fun and energising pink tones continues in interior design.
Although claims from one Barbie production designer that the movie had led to a shortage of pink paint were found to be exaggerated, the shade has seemingly never been so popular, becoming something of a “zeitgeist” shade, Murphy said.
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“I’m a big fan of pink”, she continued. “It has an incredibly interesting history as a colour. It was first used as a colour of seduction, [Madame de] Pomodor [chief mistress to France’s King Louis XV] loved it, it was the colour of mistresses all over the world.”
In Nazi Germany it became the colour used to identify homosexuals in concentration camps, she said, as men who were perceived as gay or bisexual, as well as transgender women, were made to wear a downward pointing pink triangle.
“It became an incredibly important colour politically, as such, so that’s why we see a lot of power in pink.
“But, it also is the colour of youth and Barbie dolls”, she added. “People are collecting pink, they’re making pink interiors and they’re even painting the outside of their houses pink.”
For those of us looking to inject a bit of colour into our own homes, Murphy suggests starting small and not feeling pressured to go full Barbie. “This is in its extreme in Barbiecore.”
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Instead, she suggests looking for a more muted shade of pink. “A pink plaster colour, it’s very on trend at the moment. It’s a raw lime plaster pink colour”, such as Farrow and Ball’s Sulking Room Pink.
“You could do the reveals around your window in a pink if you wanted to really sharpen it up, a small detail like a door in a garden, or even plant pots out in the garden – especially in winter, that’s really nice.”
“There is something gorgeous about a soft pink white”, she said.
As for pink not being for boys or men, Murphy disagrees. “The younger generation of men absolutely love pink.”
Key to making pink work in any circumstance is to “own it”, she said. “Don’t be standing back and waiting for the neighbours to go, ‘I love what you’ve done with that.'”