What’s New
This week was about choosing where to spend. Spend on colour where it can sit for years, on craft where people touch it, and on planning before anyone builds a wall. The houses and rooms below each made that call in a different place.
The 2027 colours agree on earth and green
Design Milk set twelve brands’ colours of the year side by side, and almost all of them sit in one corner: soft greens, earthy browns and muted blues. Celery and Webster Green, which we covered in October, now have company from Behr, Dunn-Edwards, Little Greene and others. When that many paint houses agree, the colours show up on clients’ mood boards within the season. We would use them as the base of a room rather than a feature wall, with the trim and ceiling kept a soft white so the green reads as a decision. Read it on Design Milk
A house planned for the next twenty years
The Up Studio’s Victory Lap Residence in the Hamptons puts the principal suite, kitchen and living spaces on one floor so its owners can stay as they age, with room for live-in care later. Planning for that costs very little during a renovation: a main-floor suite, a curbless shower, and blocking inside the walls for grab bars that may never be needed. Adding any of it later means opening finished walls. Read it on Design Milk
Blond brick on the Victoria cliffs
In BoForm’s Cliffside Residence in Victoria, B.C., Bidgood wrapped the window benches and fireplace in blond brick and kept the main rooms calm with wood, terrazzo and stone. The bolder surfaces are saved for the washrooms and millwork. We plan most whole-home renovations the same way: the house stays quiet, and one or two rooms get the stronger finishes. Read it on Design Milk
Fir cabinets and pink counters
Shed Architecture & Design renovated a 1910 Seattle beach house with pink countertops, patterned tile and vertical-grain fir cabinetry. Fir is warmer and less expected than the white oak most kitchens default to. If you want colour in a kitchen, put it in tile or the countertop, where it will last, and let the wood keep it calm. Read it on Design Milk
Silver leaf in a Paris garage
Atelier HA turned a garage in Saint-Cloud into a family home with rounded cabinetry finished in silver leaf by an artisan, oxblood lacquer in the bedroom, and striped tile around the living room. That much finish would be too much for a whole house. At the scale of a lacquered bar or a leafed powder-room vanity it works, as long as the finisher is booked early. Read it on Azure
Montreal mixes high and low
Azure visited Zébulon Perron’s Montreal restaurants. Rotisserie La Lune puts wood panelling over vinyl flooring and hardwood beside laminate tables, and Le Violon sets pink Portuguese marble under a retained tin ceiling. The approach is useful on any hospitality job: spend on what guests touch and see at eye level, and save underfoot and back-of-house, where durability matters more. Read it on Azure
What We Picked
Our pick is green used as a material rather than as a wall colour. Paint is the cheapest way into the 2027 palette, but the green that lasts is on joinery and stone, paired with wood that warms it.
At Ports Hotel, the bachelor suite kitchen is a soft sage with oak shelving, so a small unit feels settled rather than temporary. At Sixth Lane, the upper kitchen goes darker, with a green stone island set against dark oak. Both rooms take their green from materials that will look the same in ten years, whatever the paint charts say next autumn.
If green is on your list for 2027, decide which surface will carry it before you pick a paint chip. You can see more of Ports Hotel and Sixth Lane, read about our kitchen design work in Oakville and hospitality design, or look back at the last Dispatch.
Planning a renovation in Oakville, Mississauga or the west GTA? We would be glad to walk through it with you. Start a conversation