How to style your home with Pantone's 2022 Colour of the Year
Pantone's Very Peri may be a few years old, but as an accent on the right sofa it is still one of the most refreshing colour swaps for a UK living room — quietly modern, surprisingly versatile, and at its best against a calm neutral base.
A quick look back at Very Peri
Pantone named Very Peri its 2022 Colour of the Year — a periwinkle blue-violet that sits somewhere between a soft cornflower and a dusty lavender. The shade was picked for its lift: cool enough to feel modern, warm enough to feel welcoming, and unusual enough to mark a small reset after a stretch of safe greys and pale blushes.
What is interesting in 2026 is how well the colour has aged. Trends move on, but Very Peri has settled into the wider blue-violet family that has quietly become a staple of British interiors — used as a considered accent rather than a wall-to-wall statement. It still feels fresh, partly because it never tipped fully into trend-cliche, and partly because periwinkle has been a quietly loved colour in English homes for a very long time.
The trick now is not to treat it as a 2022 nostalgia piece. Treat it as a colour you reach for when a neutral room needs a single, deliberate jolt of personality — and let everything else stay quiet around it.
Why a neutral sofa is the perfect canvas
Very Peri is a strong colour, and strong colours need a calm foundation. Drop a periwinkle accent into a room with a busy sofa and the eye gets confused; drop it onto a soft grey, silver, beige or truffle sofa and the colour sings. The sofa carries the weight, and the accent does the talking.
This is exactly where Sofa Direct's neutral range earns its keep. A Mayfair Silver gives Very Peri a sharper, almost gallery-cool backdrop — silver and periwinkle is a quietly sophisticated pairing that feels lifted from a Mayfair show flat. A Florence Grey reads warmer and softer; the same accent cushion against it feels more lived-in, more weekend-Sunday than weekday-evening. Both work, and the choice really comes down to the room you already have.
If your space leans warmer — oak floors, cream walls, a bit of brass — a Durham Beige or Cotswold Truffle is the better canvas. Beige and truffle pull the cool of periwinkle into a friendlier, more grounded scheme, and they stop the accent from feeling sharp in a room that is otherwise soft. The whole point of a neutral foundation is that it gives you permission to play.
"A single periwinkle cushion can do more for a neutral sofa than a whole new colour scheme."
Quick accent swaps that actually work
The cheapest, fastest way to bring Very Peri into a room is through the small things — and the small things are where it works hardest. Start with cushions. One or two periwinkle cushions on a grey or beige sofa, in a slubby linen or a soft velvet, will shift the whole tone of the room without committing to anything permanent. Mix one Very Peri cushion with a cream and a charcoal cushion and you have a three-tone scheme that looks considered rather than matched.
A throw is the next step up. A loose periwinkle wool throw slung over one arm of a Florence Grey or Mayfair Silver sofa reads as colour without filling the room with it — and it folds away when you fancy a change. For something quieter, a throw with periwinkle running through a wider pattern (a stripe with cream and oat, say) gives you the accent at half-strength.
Lamps and art finish the job. A drum lamp shade in periwinkle linen on a brass or oak base brings the colour up off the floor where it catches the eye properly. A single piece of framed art with periwinkle in the palette — an abstract, a botanical, a quiet print — does the same on the wall. And if you want one really inexpensive swap, a periwinkle vase with white stems on the coffee table is enough to tie the whole scheme together.
One last tip: keep the periwinkle pieces in the same tonal family. A bright, almost-electric periwinkle cushion next to a chalky, dusty periwinkle throw can feel jarring even though the colour name is the same. Bring fabric swatches home, lay them on the sofa in the actual room light, and only commit when the two pieces look like they belong to one quiet conversation rather than two different ones.
The accent wall approach
If a cushion feels too cautious, an accent wall is the next step — but it pays to be careful where you put it. The best wall for a Very Peri accent is the one behind the sofa, not opposite it. That way the colour frames the sofa rather than competing with it, and the neutral upholstery sits in front of the periwinkle like a quiet line drawing on a coloured page. It is a small choice that makes a big difference.
For paint, a softened periwinkle (a shade or two paler than the original Pantone swatch) tends to live better on a real wall in real British light than the fully saturated version. UK rooms can be dim for half the year, and a too-strong periwinkle can read flat or grey under low light. Try a sample patch on the actual wall, watch it through a full day, and trust what you see at 4pm in November rather than what you see on the brightest Saturday in June.
How much is too much? One wall is plenty. Two walls and you are committing to a periwinkle room rather than a neutral room with a periwinkle moment — which is a different design, and a much harder one to balance. Keep the other walls in a soft cream, a warm white, or a very pale dove grey, and let the sofa, rug and timber do the calming work.
Three pairing palettes worth borrowing
The fastest way to get Very Peri right is to lock it into a small palette and stop there. Three combinations consistently work in UK rooms, and they cover most home styles.
Very Peri + cream + brass is the smartest of the three. A Mayfair Silver sofa, cream walls, periwinkle cushions and throw, a brass floor lamp and a brass picture frame or two. The brass warms what could otherwise feel cool, and the cream keeps it from tipping into anything too formal. This is a clean, slightly gallery-leaning scheme that suits flats and newer-build homes.
Very Peri + warm grey + oak is the most lived-in. A Florence Grey or Cotswold Truffle sofa, a pale oak coffee table, a chunky oat-coloured rug, and periwinkle accents in the cushions and a single drum lamp shade. The warm grey and oak hold the room together; the periwinkle is the one note that stops it being beige-on-beige. This is the scheme that ages best.
Very Peri + soft sage is the most unexpected, and the one to try if you want something quieter. Periwinkle and sage sit close enough on the colour wheel to feel related, but far enough apart to feel intentional. A Durham Beige sofa, sage curtains or a sage throw, and a periwinkle cushion or a piece of art linking the two. It is a gentle, garden-leaning palette and it suits older homes beautifully.
Whichever palette you settle on, the discipline is the same: pick three colours, repeat each of them at least twice around the room, and resist the urge to keep adding. Very Peri rewards restraint — it is a colour with enough character to do the work on its own.