Welcome to Finishing Line, our new column brought to you each issue by a brand of AkzoNobel. This week Dulux Trade takes a look at that all important finish to an interior or exterior project.
This month we’re looking at injecting colour – and the tools available to help you guide your customers – without you having to become the next Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. Choosing a colour scheme is often the hardest part of any interior project. With literally thousands of colours on offer, it can be seriously overwhelming for some – and therefore it’s also an opportunity for you to add value by offering a helping hand. By getting involved in the process early on, you can also save yourself any headaches further down the line – as we all know that sinking feeling of being handed a colour swatch from a brand of paint that we know won’t achieve a great result.
Colour guides are the easiest way of distilling down the vast choice available into a digestible format. And getting your customer to use a guide that has also been designed with the applier in mind offers even greater benefits to you. The look and feel of the Dulux Trade Professional Colour Guide, for example, makes choosing a colour easy for the consumer, whilst directing them to the trade products you prefer to use. A revamped version for 2015 even goes that one step further – by promoting the skills of a professional and explaining the benefits of using trade products.
For those customers who want to be really on trend, it’s worth being able to give a nod towards what’s ‘in vogue’. But don’t worry, you don’t have to scour copies of Elle Décor, there are resources out there offering inspiration and advice – such as Dulux Trade’s ColourFutures website www.duluxtrade.co.uk/colourfutures, which gives predictions on the colour and design trends for the year ahead. It includes a colour forecast and five colour palettes, all developed to inspire customers, including a ‘Colour of the Year’.
For 2015, it’s Copper Blush (50YR 36 263). With the cool blues and greens of recent years being replaced by a warmer colours such as pinks, reds and oranges, it’s all about this orangey copper tone. For extra brownie points, direct your customers towards all the metallic – especially copper – accessories that are now in the shops and all the up-to-date furnishings and materials designed to go really well with a warmer colour choice such as this.
We all dread the question ‘what do you think?’ – and for those customers that have trouble envisaging the final result, the last thing you want is to be relied on to reassure them that their colour choice will look great (even if you know it will). Enter visualisation: Now there are apps available that actually enable you to show customers exactly how their chosen colours will look on their walls in real time. The Dulux Trade Paint Expert app uses augmented reality technology to take away the guesswork and give your customer the confidence to make a firm decision. Or alternatively they can download the consumer app for themselves, the Dulux Visualiser App is available from app stores such as iTunes.
Offering customers advice on colour and design doesn’t have to be complex or involved, it’s just about offering them the right tools to make the decision process simpler. With a wealth of resources now available, it’s now easier than ever before to add value, without the pink ruffled shirt!
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