Valspar's 2024 Color of the Year Is the Eye Candy We've All Been Craving

Drumroll, please! Valspar just announced its 2024 Color of the Year is Renew Blue. It’s a chalky, greenish-blue shade that’s refreshing and calming—and very pleasing to the eye. The in-between nature of this shade perfectly represents the shifting world we currently live in, and that’s one of the biggest reasons it’s the winning hue.

“2024 will be an important transitional time as we come out of a recession mindset, as we go from pandemic to post-pandemic. Renew Blue will signal that," explained Sue Kim, Valspar’s director of color marketing. The brand says consumers are seeking consistency in their home and work to find balance: “With a renewed focus on self-care and personal well-being, homeowners are looking for ways to make their dwellings uplifting places to relax, recharge, and entertain.”

Kim sang more of the color’s praises, adding that it brings together the best of blue and green worlds. She points out that Renew Blue is still a blue—a classic color that’s considered a neutral and easily adaptable, but the tinge of green will play beautifully with biophilic, or nature-inspired, designs. (There’s a lot of green in nature, after all!)

We asked Kim, a color genius for the brand, a few more questions about the exquisite hue and how to incorporate it into your own home.

What are some cool applications for Renew Blue?

Color drenching, or the decorating technique of fully immersing a room in a single color or a color family, is one of the most fun, trend-forward ways to use Renew Blue in your home. According to Kim, the brand noticed this decorating technique started growing in European markets about two to three years ago, but it’s stateside now and probably here to stay for a while. The good thing about Renew Blue is that because it’s such a balanced shade, it’s pretty hard to overdo it! To successfully pull off this tone-on-tone approach, Kim recommends diversifying the textures and shapes in a space: “What makes the design exciting is the finishes—think high shine, plush, agate, concrete, and so on.” 

In terms of physical spaces that are best suited for the color, she’s loving it outdoors, which makes sense considering the green undertones will complement surrounding plants and foliage. Her top suggestions were shutters, doors, fencing, and even decking if you really want to pack a punch. If you want to bring it inside, architectural details like wainscoting and trim would really pop in the shade. Of course, the color can go on any four walls (or five if you count the ceiling!) of any room in your home, but an entryway doused in Renew Blue would really set a warm, welcoming tone.

What colors can you pair with Renew Blue?

Kim admits color drenching is wonderful, but other spaces require secondary colors. In the past, Valspar released multiple colors of the year (12 to be exact) that generally fit a cohesive theme, but this year’s notable difference is that they stuck to one and officially selected just two other “supporting” colors that pair well with Renew Blue—Perfect Backdrop (a beige) and Dusk in the Valley (a purplish gray). In many ways this is a great thing for consumers, as they often feel overwhelmed by the vast array of paint options. Besides neutrals though, we also see this blue-green working with so many other colors like Kelly green, cobalt blue, and even a sunny yellow! 

What design styles and decorative accents does Renew Blue work with?

It’s a super-flexible shade and works in so many settings from traditional to coastal, but it can work especially well in cottagecore and farmhouse motifs, which are currently trending with consumers, Kim confirms. Essentially, you don’t need to totally redecorate your home if you choose to coat all your walls in Renew Blue. “I didn’t want to introduce a color that asks people to redo their entire lives. It’s a building block, we live in layers!” Kim says. So for the most part, it’ll work with whatever you already have. But if you were to incorporate a few new pieces into your space, Kim suggested looking for accents on the warmer end of the spectrum, like antiqued metals or materials like copper and gold. Even textured black finishes would look great. She warns silver might look too cool against the hue, though, we’re kind of loving how it might give a few Y2K vibes!