The world of birds is therefore an amazing source of inspiration,singing birds inspire luminous spaces that will make us smile, with almost brights that bring some sunshine on a rainy day.

Nesting birds tell tales of arts and crafts colours to be woven into an artistic interior.

Rural chickens chirp about the authentic colours of the Swedish farm,while baby birds cheep from the delight of their softly-coloured neutrals.

Avant-gardist urban birds flock together in sombre and grey interiors, while black birds dabble in the darkest iridescence.

Parrot pastels will introduce a flapper revival, roaring towards the twentiesof the twenty-first century.

All shades can be contrasted with a basic linen, a lacquered black and a matte gold—to make all our colours sing!

—Lidewij Edelkoort

www.alcro.se

A soft and gentle universe of clear and optimistic colour is inspired by thefluffed-up downy character of endearing baby birds.

Just broken out of the egg, these tinycreatures with stumbling awkward movements and wide-open beaks fighting for food are tender and cuddly, expressing the promise of new life and new opportunities after a long period of morosity, economic crisis and general fear of life. The need forcreation is breaking out of the egg of conception.

Confident without being functional, basic without being boring and tender without being tedious, these colours are the basis of our range for 2011.

An endearing start to a new period of nesting.

—Li Edelkoort

Birds of a feather flock together in inner city clans and neighbourhoods enabling different societal expressions to be recognised by the group.

Living a make-do mentality that will dominate design with sheltering sanctuaries and squatted industrial buildings.

A survival sense of aesthetics will give the creative community a chance to express more freely and without boundaries.

Therefore the end of the age of individualism has arrived, allowing us to network and cooperate.

An army of dark neutrals will revolutionise interiors, becoming abstract and minimal.

Fashion and design have decided to stay on the farm indefinitely now that even in the virtual world farmville.com is the place to be seen, to seed and to harvest.

More than ever, our focus is on authenticity, honesty and local colour.

Inspired by the revival of a rural culture and the birds that roam the farm, the colours want to be trustworthy and traditional, with a slightly frozen and whitewashed quality to make them lively and vibrant.

Design will be true and proven and furniture will reflect the functional aspect of rural life.

Did man learn weaving from birds? Or visa versa?

The amazing skills from birds that weave and construct their habitats with bits and pieces of fibrous finds has been inspiring man from the beginning of time. Nesting has become a contemporary keyword to describe our current and crafted lifestyle; open-ended yet cosy and comfortable. A gentle and hospitable space ready to receive family and friends.

The arts & crafts movement is making an important revival, inspiring objects made by hand in timber, hide, bone, ceramics and glass. Filling the nest with unique pieces.

The creative consumer is born.

A new and soft range of coquettish cosmetic colours meant to be used for an elegant and sexual purpose, giving a refined and genderspecific meaning to paint.

Caged birds of exotic origins are inspiring a highly-charged and erotic sense of aesthetics, drawing on the idea of the liberal bondage of beauty. Translated to the real world with the concretisation of female fantasises in private spaces like the personal bathroom, the secret walk-in closet and the remarkable revival of the boudoir—the ultimate female sanctuary.

These softly greyish pastels will give an edge of rococo to contemporary decoration and should be used with restraint and wisdom.

The sudden song of the singing bird can wake up the spirit and produce a smile. It can give light to an otherwise uneventful moment. Giving colour to an ordinary day.

Its humble frame and chubby coat only help make it more endearing and make its magnificent voice even more remarkable. Their little bodies are tinted in drab and neutral tones with a strong accent colour on a rounded breast or hidden under a pointed tail.

These gentle colours are medium brights that are easy to mimic and use, meant to act as sudden unexpected accents in otherwise neutral spaces.

Just enough to give light and life to an interior.

Highly intelligent and powerful birds have been dark symbols since the beginning of man.

Resourceful and operating with a strict hierarchy in a large flock called a murder, they have become icons of the gothic movement, living often in cemeteries and believed to assist the transition of the spirit to the after life.

Standing for dark and almost dramatic environments, so much loved by the avant-garde, and therefore introducing much darker colours for the home.

these tinted hues of black are used to update anything the consumer wants to change in a radical and provocative way.