Where Colour Meets Feeling: A Conversation with Yvonne Koné

Yvonne Koné’s Safe Place palette for Blēo is a quiet exploration of colour as a deeply personal language. Guided by intuition and curiosity, Koné approaches design as a way to translate feeling into form — whether through leather goods, spaces and interiors, or pigment.

With a background rooted in fashion and over a decade of thoughtful, quality-driven work, Koné has always prioritised emotional resonance over trend. Her palette is not about decoration, but about presence. Each tone invites a sense of calm, of belonging — an atmosphere that feels honest, lived-in, and uniquely yours.

Safe Place is an open invitation: to experience colour not as a statement, but as a shelter.

In conversation, Yvonne Koné speaks to the emotional undercurrents of her work, the memories behind the palette, and how Safe Place became a reflection of what it means to feel at home — in colour, and in oneself.

A Colour Compass

Safe Place balances muted tones with vibrant shades that quietly sing — soothing and invigorating in equal measure. Each hue is developed for its emotional resonance, evoking calm, warmth, or creativity. It’s a palette designed not just to be seen, but felt — encouraging personal reflection and slow, sensory living. There is space here: to pause, to wander, to connect.

Speaking with Yvonne Koné is much like stepping into her palette. There’s a gentleness in her presence, a clarity in her intention. Her approach to colour mirrors her broader philosophy — led not by rules, but by feeling.

"When I work with colour, I want to work freely. Without rules. I don’t follow rigid theories — though of course, some truths resonate. Instead, I want people to ask: how do I want to feel? What’s the atmosphere I’m craving? Calmness? Energy? Intimacy? Start with that. Let it guide your main colour. Then build from there — add contrast, add texture, let it evolve naturally."

Colour, for Koné, is difficult to put into words. But she believes it’s a muscle that can be trained — through seeing, feeling, and reflecting. Over time, she has come to accept that inspiration often defies logic. It might come from the way light falls across a field, or from something as mundane as a discarded object. Both, in her view, can hold meaning.

"I believe our colour preferences are deeply tied to memory. If anything, I hope people can connect more intuitively with those impressions — to create something honest, something that feels like them."

With Safe Place, Koné offers more than a palette — she offers a framework for choosing colour with intention and ease. An approach that honours emotion, instinct, and the quiet beauty of everyday life.

Collecting and Archiving Hues

Yvonne Koné has been mixing colours for years — thousands of them. Some are for clients, some just for herself. While many of these shades have lived in physical archives, their permanence has never been the point.

“It’s true that I collect colours,” she says. “It can feel therapeutic, almost meditative, to process them more thoroughly.” These colour studies often come and go. Boxes of samples accumulate, only to be discarded in one of her periodic purges. “I don’t like holding onto too many things,” she explains. “But the impressions stay.”

Koné’s references are spontaneous and deeply visual — a wall spotted down a side street in Italy, laundry caught in the sun, a flash of colour that brings traffic to a halt just long enough for her to take a photo.

“I’ve stopped traffic before just to capture a fleeting shade,” she says, laughing. “I think that’s how you know it matters — when you’re willing to chase it.” Most of the colours she collects, though, never make it into a physical sample. “They just float around in my head,” she adds. “They stay with me.”

Painting as Ritual

Colour isn’t just a design tool for Koné — it’s a kind of emotional architecture. She has repainted her home almost every year for the past two decades. “Not because I love painting — I don’t,” she admits. “But because I love the shift that happens after. It’s become a personal ritual. Like a reset. A cleanse.”

For her, the impact of colour is visceral. It affects not only her environment but also her state of mind. “Colour changes how I feel in my home, in my body,” she says. “I really believe you become what and who you surround yourself with.”

There was one year when time constraints led her to choose a ready-mixed grey from a paint shop — something she’d never usually do.“I’m always meticulous about mixing the colour myself,” she says. “And honestly, it’s been like living with this shadow. Heavy. A bad shade can weigh on you like a cloud. A good one? It lets the light in. It changes your day.”

That experience was a reminder of why colour matters to her so deeply. It’s not just surface — it’s atmosphere, energy, emotion.

A Space for Creation

For Yvonne Koné, creative work begins with a sense of inner spaciousness — freedom, fearlessness, and clarity. Her physical environment plays a role in that too, particularly the early morning hours in her living room. “It’s my favourite place to work,” she says. “Especially in the early hours. That’s why it’s such an important space to get right.”

Despite her deep relationship with colour, Koné prefers a neutral workspace — pared-back, minimal, and quiet. Like her palette; right now she has Milky Lavender and Putty on her walls. With colour playing such a central role in her creative process, she finds it important not to be overwhelmed by it in her surroundings.

“I don’t work well in clutter,” she explains. “There’s already so much texture and colour in what I do — so the space around me needs to be functional, calming, and distraction-free.”

Colour as a Starting Point

For Koné, colour is never an afterthought. It enters the process early — often instinctively, quietly guiding the shape of a project.“Colour is usually what I remember first — about a place, a moment, a feeling,” she says. “Even when I’m working on something purely material — textiles, surfaces, spaces — colour is always present, speaking softly.”

She often envisions a palette in direct response to a space, imagining how light interacts with surfaces, how hues can accentuate or soften architectural elements, or how subtle contrasts can shift the atmosphere. “It might be how a dusty yellow catches soft light, or how a lavender tone seems to hold stillness,” she reflects. “Colour doesn’t always lead, sometimes it’s the material — but to make something cohesive is like directing an orchestra. Independent elements forming one harmonious whole.”

For her, form, mood, light, and colour are inseparable. Each one carries weight. Each one adds voice. “You can’t separate them,” she says. “It all comes together.”

Making and Mixing Safe Place

Creating Safe Place was both the easiest and the hardest thing for Yvonne Koné. It was easy because, when you know, you just know. But it was also hard because narrowing down the right shades became almost obsessive. To find the perfect colours, Koné lived with them — literally. She hung samples above her bed, surrounding herself with them as they became the last thing she saw at night and the first thing she saw in the morning. “That’s how I find the right ones,” she explains. “I need to live with them. To feel them, to see how they shift in different light.”

The Safe Place palette is a balance of quiet and bold, capturing a range of moods and moments. For Koné, each colour evokes something deeply personal. Sun and Milky Lavender, for example, are gently contrasting, like a warm memory brushing up against something cooler and more grounded. Soft Mint and Pearl sit together so crisply, so cleanly. Fire and Ashy — more textured, more dry. “Garden and Sky will always be with me,” she says. “It’s an old love.”

For those looking for calm, Koné suggests soft, unobtrusive tones like Putty, Pearl, and Pale — colours that recede, creating space to breathe. Elegance and clarity emerge in the clean lines of Soft Mint and Pearl. For energy, colours like Water, Sun, Fire, or Candy each offer vibrant intention — perfect for spaces that inspire movement and conversation. Rose and Putty, on the other hand, are for comfort.

“Air is for creativity,” she adds. “It changes depending on what you place around it. It adapts.”

Koné also finds joy in the subtle drama of finish — pairing ultra-matte and high-gloss surfaces, or using soft pastel contrasts to add unexpected depth and texture.

Ultimately, the Safe Place palette is designed to be just that — a safe place to land. A palette where people can feel at home, where they can feel themselves.