palate / palette / pallet Your “palate” is the roof of your mouth, and by extension, your sense of taste. A “palette” is the flat board an artist mixes paint on (or by extension, a range of colors). A “pallet” is either a bed (now rare) or a flat platform onto which goods are loaded.
I don't understand that argument. My toaster only needs to work in my kitchen, not every kitchen.
From a manufacture's point of view I get it. It is cheaper to produce 3 colors than 54.
In contrast, neutral colors will look good in any color palette and require zero design talent from your side.
But they were in the past? I don't know but I wonder why this might have changed.
There's, relatedly, probably some effect from all those home makeover & house-buying shows, which constantly push "any 'weird' color is bad, and any room without great color coordination is bad, and it's not OK not to mind it". There's a Mitchell and Webb sketch about this, in which two home-buyers on such a show are presented a bathroom with avocado fixtures, and the host berates them over multiple takes because their initial reaction isn't as negative as it ought to be. Fiction, but there's definitely a kind of same-ness to people's reactions to any but a few acceptable colors on those shows.