‘Vivid’ Mexico: Bold Hues are Everywhere, but Neutrals are also Part of the Color Story

By Diana Mosher

There’s no better place to source color inspiration than Mexico. Vibrant hues—and a range of sophisticated neutrals—are seen everywhere from the food to the natural landscape to the built environment. Mexico is an enormous country covering nearly 770,000 square miles. It’s everything you saw at your last beach resort and much more. I love chilling by the ocean in Playa del Carmen, but cities are my favorite travel destination. 

If your Mexico experience has been limited to coastal destinations, I recommend checking out San Miguel de Allende, Puebla and dynamic Mexico City. I visited Mexico City in the fall of 2018 for DesignWeek Mexico a city-wide celebration of luxury design with an avant-garde maker component exhibited outdoors in shipping containers repurposed as booths. One of the highlights of DesignWeek was a showhouse in the Polanco neighborhood where my family lived for a couple of years during my childhood. 

My mother eventually returned to Guadalajara, the second largest city in Mexico, where I have gained a new appreciation for vivid color and pattern but also for neutrals, texture and materiality in general. 

I love the subtle and varied coloration of the brickwork in my mother’s home. Outside, in the garden, the brick was not as interesting. We decided to paint it white. Sometimes the best choice of color is no hue at all.