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The ballroom of Djakarta Theater XXI in Central Jakarta was a riot of colors on Oct. 11. Booths painted in various hues and designs lined its wood-paneled walls, creating a light and dark blend that gave the illusion that the booths were sinking into the floor.

Colors of the night met with the bright colors of day, while the wall of one booth revealed a quirky pattern resembling a metropolitan skyline at dusk.

“It’s a step into another world,” said interior designer Rina Renville, who was in charge of the skyline booth. “It’s a room in which we can escape from reality.”

Rina was one of many designers who attended the launch of Color Futures 2012, an event organized by AkzoNobel Decorative Paints Indonesia to reveal the paint color palettes for the new season.

AkzoNobel Decorative Paints is a Dulux-affiliated paint company based in Amsterdam that has been distributing its products in Indonesia for 40 years.

“The colors released by AkzoNobel this year are very fresh, clean and dynamic,” Rina said. “They represent an optimistic spirit for 2012.”

Under the main theme of “Possibilities,” AkzoNobel released five color palettes: “Delicate Mix,” “One Small Seed,” “Living Scrapbook,” “Different Worlds” and “Rediscovered Heroes.” Each palette offers a harmonious set of colors that can all be applied in one room.

“We know that people have trouble picking colors sometimes,” said Jeremy Paul Rowe, the company’s managing director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. “That’s why we created Color Futures 2012, for people to use as a guide.’’

Heleen van Gent, manager of the AkzoNobel global Aesthetic Center, sat down with a team of architects, color specialists and interior designers to come up with the palettes presented at the event.

“We discussed the many things that are happening in the world today,” she said. “We looked into fashion and social trends to come up with these fresh new colors.”

A strong concept underlies each palette. The “Delicate Mix” palette, for example, offers a muted elegance that can calm the mind in times of trouble.

“These colors create a moment of peace and quiet in your life,” Rowe said. The palette consists of warm camels, nude pinks and corals with nuances of oiled leather, wood and polished concrete.

“One Small Seed” represents mankind’s bond with nature.

“Nature has been an ongoing source of inspiration for us,” Rowe said. “This is hardly surprising. It’s always fascinating to watch nature grow from one small seed.”

The color palette conveys a spring morning, with its watery greens, sky blues and dark soil colors.

The “Living Scrapbook” palette represents a rising phenomenon in social media.

“One of the most quoted phrases from Steve Jobs’s speech at Stanford University is ‘connecting the dots,’ ” Rowe said. “He said that we can only understand our lives by looking back and connecting the things that happened to us in the past.

“This is exactly what people are doing all over the world now,” Rowe continued. “Through social media, they are starting to connect the dots of their lives. They’re scrapbooking in a digital environment.”

In a way, our homes are also living scrapbooks of our lives, Rowe said. For people who have always lived in the same house, their homes usually display travel souvenirs, mementos of loved ones and other objects that they have consciously decided to hold onto.

“Living Scrapbook” aims to help people set up their homes as living scrapbooks by featuring warm, sentimental and non-mainstream colors, such as deep orange, peachy pink and varied teals.

Meanwhile, “Different Worlds” captures the idea of moving from one world to another to liberate the mind.

“We try to bring together the real reality, overlaid with some kind of virtual reality [in the color palette] to create illusions,” Rowe said.

This palette features fuchsia, shades of purple and dark violets.

Finally, the “Rediscovered Heroes” palette encourages people to look at their old things and turn them into something new.

“In a time when most people are looking into the least expensive way of doing things, one thing they can do is to work with what they’ve got,” Rowe said. “When you look at old things and see them in a new light, you’ll soon rediscover them and work with them in a new way.”

The palette features the down-to-earth colors of an industrial era, such as denim blue, rusty metal tones and concrete grays.

As for the main theme, “Possibilities,” red is the most dominant color.

“Red is one of the few colors that represents full-blooded optimism and energy,” Rowe said. “It’s also an exciting color for most people.”

But is the color appropriate for Indonesia’s tropical climate? Local interior designer Raul Renanda says that with a few tricks, it can work.

“Red tends to make a room or house feel hot,” he said. “So we might need to tone it down a little bit, or combine it with neutral colors to make it more friendly.”

In his three-square-meter booth, the interior designer painted one of the walls with a fresh and juicy red and the other walls with maple brown and industrial gray colors to balance it.

“The result is a room that is warm, cozy and oozing positive energy,” he said. “You can pick any two colors that you like and put them together in one room. But you must pick a third color that goes well with both of them as a balancing element.”

And you can combine these colors on either the walls, furniture or on decorations in a room, he said.

“We may not be facing an easy time next year,” Raul said. “Yet we have to face it with lots of spirit and a positive mind. And these new colors will help to set your mood for it.”

So what are you waiting for? Grab a brush and re-color your world.