Are you looking to spruce up your interior with a fresh coat of pain? Every day, homeowners across the nation agonize over the vast array of color palettes available, never even realizing that picking the color is only half the battle. According to the knowledgeable experts at L.W. Winslow Painting, Inc. when selecting a color scheme you should also consider how your new color will look as the lighting in the room changes. Have you even put on a black tee-shirt with your favorite pair of black leggings only to discover when out and about running errands that your tee-shirt is actually a dark navy blue? Anyway, you get the picture and this phenomenon has a technical name – illuminant metamerism. Simply put, colors can take on a very different appearance when viewed under a different light. Many homeowners make the mistake of selecting what they think is the perfect color only to find out it looks completely different once they get it on their walls. It’s important to remember that light changes throughout the day and it’s even more important to understand exactly how lighting affects paint color before your spend your hard earned cash on gallons of paint.
How Sunlight Affects the Color of Your Paint
The natural light coming through your windows during the day shows the color of your paint in its truest form, this is one of the reasons why the color appears different once you paint it on your walls than it did on the paint chip in the store under artificial lighting. As a general rule, you should always take the number of windows and the size of the room into consideration when selecting your final paint color. Windows facing the south provide the most intense light making lighter color palettes appear dull and darker color palettes appear more intense. On the other hand, rooms with windows facing to the north provide indirect natural light, in other words they provide warmth that is consistent throughout the day. Dark color palettes often appear darker, and light colors appear to be more muted. Windows that face to the east provide natural light in the morning but gets darker as the day goes by, making dark colors appear intense in the morning but dull later in the day. Windows that face to the west appear darker in the morning and brighter in the later afternoon. Remember, every home has its own individual lighting patterns that can affect the way that the interior colors will look. Your ideal colors should be pleasing to the eye under a number of different lighting variations.
How Artificial Lighting Affects Paint Colors
Artificial lighting can affect the appearance of your paint color so it’s important to understand how light bulbs are rated, for example color temperature is measured in Kelvins which also rates color tones. Household bulbs are rated between 2,700K & 5,000K, the lower the temperature indicates warmer tones, while higher temperatures indicate cool tones. To put these numbers in perspective a 5,000K bulb is most comparable to natural daylight. Other means of rating bulbs is the color rendering index (CRI). Bulbs are most often rated between 50 and 100. The higher the rating indicates a more accurate representation of color most similar to natural light. Before purchasing your paint you should check the CRI and color temperature of your bulbs before selecting your paint. To ensure that your paint color is closest to its truest color in natural light you should select bulbs with the highest CRI ratings. The best way to ensure that your color selection is the right one for your home is to paint a small square of drywall that can be placed in different areas throughout the room to see how the color changes in different lights. If you generally like the color but there is a certain time during the day that you are unsure, consider experimenting with different types of light bulbs or in the case of natural light, different types of window coverings.
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To learn more about residential and commercial interior and exterior painting and related services, contact the knowledgeable experts at L.W. Winslow Painting today!