This White is the Right White, Right?

I love color. It seems like a silly statement but it is so true. I honestly could not tell you what my favorite color is because to me color is so much more that just this one shot thing. I feel like color has been relegated to this singular thing. It is just one more check on the list of useless information that people like to compile about themselves to make themselves seem interesting and accessible. Color is not stagnant. it is not permanent and it is not unchanging. Color is alive, ok yes that sounds super duper hokey but in essence it is true. Color is not something that is immune to change. Color is one of the most situational aspects of design. Color is a needy parameter, it demands attention from the other colors around it, from the shape and finish of what its being applied to and the light of the space it is in.

The other day a friend and I were in the Home Depo. pouring over color samples. We are currently working on remodeling a modeled space for our day lighting class (137B) and were trying to put together a color pallet. Pulling deep blues, rich browns, and camel tones was pretty easy. We pulled and compared leaving off colors with tonalities that we didn't like and keeping the ones that worked together the best. The funny part came when we were looking for a white. White is color that most people do not have enough respect or understanding of. For most people a white is a white is a white, which not even close to true. The proper white can make or break a room and with the variations being nearly endless choosing the right white can be a daunting task.

Standing in front the paint chip display it was almost comical how blind we can be. I managed to find what I could pick out at the purest white in the collection and we proceed to look for more. Shades of white that were tucked in among other colors seemed at first to be just as white as white can be, but once we held it up to the "pure" white the tint was a little more than apparent. This continued for awhile each white almost a disappointing as the last. Finally we looked at the Whitewash collection from Ralph Lauren. We had been looking at this part of the display since we walked up and up until now the colors all seemed really white. As an experiment I held up the "pure" white color up and moved it over all the shades in the collection slowly. It was almost like magic, the shades of colors popped out of the whites like nothing else. We stood there staring at the now not so whitewash collection in humored bemusement.

Color is nothing to fear, it is fantastic, it is just something that must be handled with caution. To really find the right color you must compare it to other colors. A color out of context may at first, second, or even third glance look like the perfect fit, but what happened when you put it next to another color. Does it pick up the other color? Does it deepen or lighten in tonality in response to a color around it? Color can do really funny things if not kept in check. A great little exercise for finding the right shade of a color is defined by Josef Albers in his book on color theory called "Interaction of Color"

Photo from Josef Albers "Ineratcion of Color" pg 13

This exersise, created to help define which shade is lighter or darker, requires one to put sample A and A together. Quickly separate the two colors and if region C appears lighter than A then B is the darker shade, this also works in reverse. This test is one way to help us get a better grip on the flighty temptress that is color, and allows us to use it better to our own ends. So next time you get all gung-ho and want to paint the living room please please please take some time and look at colors, take paint chips home and sit on them, and take advantage of sample sizes of paint, because nothing can ruin a great room quicker than the wrong color.