Shades of Light book

Margrethe Odgaard

There are more than two years of study and thorough work behind Margrethe Odgaard’s ‘Shades of Light’. The original 900 colour swatches have been reduced to a book consisting of 220 pages and 276 finished colours.

In ‘Shades of Light’ which has the subtitle ‘An incomplete range of colours from a culture of slow and hesitant light’ – it is all about the Nordic colour spectrum and in the book you get Margrethe Odgaard’s reflections and proposals on a specific Nordic colour palette.

Margrethe says:

‘At a market in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco I was handed my vegetables and nuts in plastic bags with gorgeous stripes in turquoise and orange-brown. I persuaded the vendor to sell me a whole roll of bags, but when I unpacked them back home, they had lost their lustre. A colour only truly works well when it is compatible with the local light conditions, and the combination of turquoise and orange-brown plastic suddenly seemed akin and over the top in my Copenhagen life.’