The COVID-19 pandemic has brought changes to our daily habits, many that will continue long into the future. Whether working, relaxing or pursuing hobbies, Americans spent more time at home in the last year than ever before, and a significant rise in home renovation projects reflected this trend.

According to a survey conducted by Porch.com, 61% of homeowners made updates to their garden, patio or house structure, and 76% made at least one home improvement since the start of the pandemic.

Interest in creating beautiful outdoor spaces with new gardens, grills and patio products, and upgrading interiors with new kitchen and bath fixtures helped to propel this pandemic home improvement boom. It is more important than ever for coatings companies like PPG to keep pace with evolving color and design trends, and consumer demand for durable products that last to protect their investments.

Add an Edge to Your Outdoor Aesthetic

By investing in products and upgrades to improve their outdoor spaces, homeowners are looking for ways to ensure that their outdoor products withstand harsh exterior conditions, including snow, ice and salt-laden coastal climates.

This is especially important on products like fences, grills and patio furniture that often feature hard-to-coat edges and surfaces. With the growing popularity of outdoor kitchens and patio furniture, driven by homeowners looking to extend their living space, powder coatings are increasingly becoming the coating of choice to protect these surfaces.

Interest in powder coatings is rising, driven in large part by their sustainable properties — formulated without volatile organic compounds (VOCs) intentionally added — and their ability to provide maximum coverage across parts.

Specifically, high transfer efficiency and high-edge powder coatings are durable solutions that provide extreme corrosion protection on hard-to-coat areas like sharp edges and complex shapes on metal-based products like grills and patio furniture. This is a significant advantage for manufacturers since metal products are expected to account for 76% of outdoor furniture sales through 2024.

High-performance powder coatings combine excellent edge coverage with low VOCs and non-triglycidyl isocyanurate (TGIC) formulations that deliver the ultimate in colorfastness, corrosion resistance and sustainability advantaged benefits. Additionally, these coatings can provide velvet-touch textures to further enhance the look and feel of outdoor patio furniture.

One new trend is that today’s homeowners want a broader range of aesthetic options for fencing as the industry is seeing a growing interest in looks that match outdoor décor or blend into surrounding scenery.

Bringing the Outside In

While durability and corrosion resistance are at the forefront of outdoor coatings specifications, color and aesthetics are top considerations for indoors.

While we are hopefully nearing the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, a sense of optimism is taking hold and influencing design trends. In fact, PPG’s color experts discovered that consumers are more inclined to embrace more colorful selections after difficult points in history, as we saw during the post-depression era of the 1920s. We are seeing this trend emerge again, particularly in kitchens, as homeowners increasingly look to this space as a canvas for artistic and bold design.

While finishes like matte black, brass and copper are increasingly popular coating colors for knobs and door handles, green aesthetics are one of the hottest emerging trends. Green evokes a wide range of emotions. It represents regrowth in a post-pandemic world by mimicking the resiliency of nature and the idea of bringing the outside in, while also serving as a symbol of sustainability and regrowth. Additionally, a green aesthetic represents “fresh,” which is ideal for kitchens and bakeware.

While kitchenware was once dominated by monotone black and gray coatings, innovative coatings are bringing fresh, new looks. This green aesthetic has elevated cookware items from utilitarian tools to interior design pieces, enabling homeowners to use cookware as serving pieces, or even preparing specific dishes aimed to deliver a feeling of freshness in pans with green finishes.

A Welcome Addition for Wood

Wood tones are becoming increasingly popular in interior design. But while powder coatings have long been recognized for their durability on thinner metals, the technology had worked less reliably on wood composites and oversized metals — until now.

New advancements in low-bake technology have delivered an improved solution for powder coatings on heat-sensitive wood, wood composites and dense metals to overcome the traditional barriers to using powder on these substrates. The result is a tough and durable coating that offers advantages over competing finishing technologies in terms of sustainability, aesthetics and functionality.

This is helping homeowners incorporate their design inspirations in spaces throughout the house — from cabinetry and furniture in the kitchen and living room to office furniture, as people are making their home office a more permanent workplace.

A Coatings Solution for Any Environment

PPG ENVIROCRON^® Extreme Protection Edge and PPG ENVIROCRON High Transfer Efficiency (HTE) powder coatings provide an answer for the hard-to-coat edges on exterior items like grills and patio furniture. Meanwhile, PPG ENVIROCRON HeatSense powder is engineered to complement the latest advances in low-bake cure technology to enable wood manufacturers to leverage the benefits of powder coatings.

These coatings technologies are all backed by PPG’s color expertise with its team of global color analysts. This team utilized global forecasting trends to identify Olive Sprig as PPG’s 2022 Color of the Year to help bring the resiliency of nature inside the home.

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