I've seen something similar with constructors. A hash is set up with default values, and the constructor can take a hash or hash ref as an argument.

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $hash_ref = shift;
    my $self = {
        value => '100',
        color => 'charcoal',
    };
    @$self{keys %$hash_ref} = (values %$hash_ref) if (defined %$hash_r
+ef);
    bless($self, $class);
}
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Passing in a list like you have won't let you do the nice list slice operation, and it's possible to pass in new values than what are defined.

Still, it's a pretty nice technique, and there's no reason it has to be limited to constructors. In your case, it just might work.