Airline Interiors - Boldness Beyond Blue
For all the time and resources that airlines spend on branding, on cabin interior design, on the CMF (colour, material and finish) of their seats, so many of them still end up returning to that old faithful industry palette: dark blue. Many of the larger and more design-focused airlines adapt these dark blue seats with other design elements, like quilted seat covers, but the colourways have changed surprisingly little over the past decades.
Some of this commonality results from colour theory, of course, where a dark blue inspires calm and professionalism. Indeed, our minds are socialised into thinking of smart dark blues as safe: the very name of navy-blue denoting authority, its use in settings including seats and pilot uniforms, and the trust and confidence that go along with it it in our minds, lends itself to trust and confidence in the airline and in its pilots.
It’s been notable in recent years how some seat makers are looking to draw together the way their seats look to present a family approach, and to suggest to airlines a range of options for their products. Thompson Aero Seating and its CMF expert Belinda Mason are to be particularly commended for their impressive Project Echo CMF palette, unveiled in advance of this year’s Aircraft Interiors Expo, and which performed so well on the stand.
Perhaps one of the great successes of this project is that the choice of a natural, warm, and relaxing palette of greens, tans and neutrals is so far from airlines’ usual choices that it really posits the question: how can airlines be bold and innovative with their cabins, beyond blue?
With the triangle-widget quilted stitching that it rolled out in the mid-2010s, Delta started innovating in the space of subtle brand positioning even within the dark blue arena. This can be executed very effectively, and is particularly useful in seatback dress covers, where the primary viewing experience during the passenger journey is on boarding, after which the passenger is looking in exactly the other direction.
A prerequisite for true success here is that there is a strong shape element to use, preferably standing out from the airline’s brand equity. Singapore Airlines’ batik flower motif, which dates more than 50 years back to Pierre Balmain’s design for the airline’s flight attendant uniforms, is perhaps the most iconic here — but in lounges rather than the cabin, subtly applied in the airline’s lounges in relief.
The Air France “ribbon” marque, too, is being used beyond a bold statement pop sewn into the seat covers: it appears as an almost abstract yet familiar element in the airline’s lounges and into the carpets of some aircraft.
Etihad’s Facets of Abu Dhabi triangle branding is another excellent example of a way a shape element can bring boldness even within cabins that lean towards neutral palettes.
Strong brand examples in strong, signature colours pop into our minds precisely because they are so rare: Korean Air’s celadon echoed in its uniforms, for example, or easyJet’s splashy orange, or Virgin Atlantic’s lipstick red. It is notable, of course, that the two latter have been toned down in recent cabin implementations to grey-with-orange and more of a burgundy-espresso palette within the cabin.
Tying the brand and soft product together with the hard product within the cabin is a smart move: easyJet has long featured single-serving bottles of the iconic bright orange Aperol Spritz on its inflight menu.
Japanese low-cost carrier Peach, an ANA subsidiary, has eye-catching purple-and-pink aircraft with purple interiors, but perhaps the strongest branding element here is its inflight service, where changing menus over the years have featured everything from peach pastries to limited edition collab Peach x Kororo gummy candies, to the Flying Arakawa peach juice produced in Wakayama Prefecture, where the airline’s Kansai Airport home base is located.
This kind of strategic view of a brand, together with the addition of clever elements across soft and hard product, can bring real boldness to the passenger experience — beyond, or even alongside, the blue.
