One of my favorite parts of Chicago Design Week is walking the showrooms at THE MART and along Fulton Market before the crowds arrive. It’s a chance to slow down, look beyond individual products and notice the broader patterns emerging across our industry. This year, one thing was impossible to ignore: color was everywhere.
Not in loud or attention-seeking ways, but in rich, confident palettes that gave spaces warmth, personality and a stronger sense of identity. Earthy reds, saturated greens, softened blues, layered browns and muted purples appeared throughout the city’s commercial showrooms, creating environments that felt immersive, welcoming and remarkably timeless.
It reinforced something we’ve been talking about at Kuchar for quite some time: Color is no longer simply an aesthetic decision. It’s becoming one of the smartest and most underutilized tools organizations have to shape workplace culture, employee experience and brand identity.
For years, color has often been one of the final conversations in workplace design. Once the architecture was established, the furniture specified, and the floor plan resolved, color became the layer that tied everything together — a branding exercise, a finish selection or simply the safest choice for the broadest audience. It certainly played an important role, but it wasn’t always viewed as something capable of influencing how people work, interact and feel within a space.
Today, that conversation is changing. As organizations rethink the purpose of the office and invest more intentionally in culture, employee well-being, recruitment and retention, they’re beginning to recognize that color can do much more than make a workplace look beautiful. It has the power to shape perception, reinforce company values, encourage connection, support different work styles and create environments employees genuinely want to spend time in.
That shift reflects a much bigger change happening across workplace design. The office is no longer competing solely with other offices. It’s competing with home, hospitality, neighborhood coffee shops, boutique hotels, libraries and every environment where people have grown accustomed to feeling comfortable, inspired and welcome. Employees have more choice than ever before, and organizations are recognizing that earning the commute requires more than flexible furniture and good technology. It requires creating experiences people can’t replicate anywhere else.
Color has become one of the most effective ways to do exactly that.
Unlike many design elements, color works on both a conscious and subconscious level. It shapes first impressions before people fully register the architecture around them. It influences mood, establishes rhythm, reinforces brand identity and helps define how a space is experienced throughout the day. Whether someone is collaborating with colleagues, focusing on heads-down work or taking a quiet moment to recharge, the surrounding palette contributes to that experience in ways that are often felt more than consciously noticed.
At Kuchar, we’ve always thought of color as a language. It communicates who an organization is, what it values, and how it wants people to feel. It can express creativity without becoming chaotic, confidence without feeling overly corporate, or warmth without sacrificing sophistication. The most successful palettes aren’t necessarily the boldest — they’re the ones that feel authentic to the people and the purpose behind the space.
Perhaps that’s why we’re seeing so many organizations move beyond the expansive white walls and grayscale interiors that defined workplace design for so many years. Those environments reflected a particular moment in design history, emphasizing neutrality, flexibility and broad appeal. While there’s still a place for restraint, today’s workplace increasingly calls for something with more depth and personality. Companies want spaces that feel human. Employees want environments that reflect culture rather than simply accommodate work.
That was one of my biggest takeaways from Chicago Design Week. What stood out wasn’t simply the prevalence of color, but how thoughtfully it was being used. These weren’t dramatic statements designed to dominate a space. Many of the palettes functioned almost as a new generation of neutrals, bringing warmth, richness and identity while allowing the architecture, furnishings and materials to remain the hero. The conversation is shifting away from whether color should be bold and toward whether it is intentional. That’s an important distinction because great workplace design has never been about chasing trends. It’s about understanding why people respond to certain environments and translating those insights into spaces that remain relevant long after individual colors or materials fall in and out of fashion.
One of the advantages of designing across workplace, hospitality, residential, retail and commercial environments is the ability to watch ideas move between industries. Hospitality has long understood the relationship between atmosphere and emotion. Residential design continues to embrace warmth, individuality and comfort. Retail brands know that color is inseparable from identity and customer experience. Increasingly, those same expectations are shaping the modern workplace as employees seek offices that feel layered, welcoming and reflective of the organizations they represent.
We’ve seen this shift firsthand through the launch of Colored by Kuchar, our collaborative color strategy service for furniture manufacturers. The idea grew from a simple observation: While workplaces are becoming more experiential and emotionally intelligent, many furniture collections are still built around palettes designed to feel universally safe. There’s certainly a place for versatility, but there’s also an opportunity to create products that feel more distinctive, more intentional, and more reflective of how people want to live and work today.
Working across multiple sectors gives us a unique perspective on how color is evolving and where it’s headed next. Through Colored by Kuchar, we collaborate with manufacturers to develop thoughtful, brand-driven color direction for furniture collections, product lines and showroom environments. The goal isn’t to chase trends or create the loudest palette in the room. It’s to help brands think beyond standard colorways and develop products that feel distinctive, commercially relevant and built to endure.
We’re also seeing colors once considered statement hues begin to function almost like neutrals. Muted oxbloods, moss greens, softened terracottas, murky blues and warm clay tones introduce richness and personality while remaining remarkably versatile. Even relatively small decisions — a custom powder coat, a contrast stitch, a thoughtfully edited upholstery offering or an unexpected laminate — can completely shift the perception of a product without sacrificing its commercial appeal.
Those opportunities become even more meaningful when manufacturers and designers begin collaborating earlier in the process. Rather than asking which colors should be added to an existing collection, the conversation can begin by asking what kind of experience the product is meant to support. How should it contribute to a workplace? What emotions should it reinforce? How can it strengthen a company’s broader story?
Those are very different questions and they lead to very different outcomes.
As workplace design continues to evolve, I believe we’ll see color move much earlier in the design process. Rather than asking what color should finish a workplace, we’ll begin asking what role color should play in shaping it. That’s a subtle but important shift. Because when color is considered alongside planning, architecture, furniture, lighting and materiality from the outset, it becomes far more than an aesthetic decision. It becomes part of the workplace strategy itself, helping organizations communicate who they are, support how people work, strengthen culture and create environments that people genuinely want to return to.
Editor’s Note: Sarah Kuchar-Parkinson, is the owner and creative director of Chicago-based interior design studio Kuchar. Specializing in commercial, residential, and hospitality projects that challenge convention, the concept-to-completion firm has designed offices, showrooms, restaurants, and residences across Chicago, Austin, Amsterdam, London, Miami, New York, Phoenix, Silicon Valley and Singapore.