There are major paint companies out there trying to sell their paint products without offering individual color chips. How is this possible? Once you select a particular color from the paint strip, it's imperative to see the color in a bigger swatch, without the other colors around it, confusing matters.
Colors must be seen in context. For instance, if you put a green swatch against a red wall, that green will look particularly bright. However, if you put that same green swatch against a green wall, it will look like a completely different color.In this example, which green do you like better? Guess what? It's the same green.
So, with that said, take a look at how two different paint companies handle organizing their paint colors (see picture below). On the top, we have Pratt and Lambert, with light to dark, but with a range of similar hues mixed together. On the bottom, we have Benjamin Moore, with the same light to dark, but this time, with only one hue showing it's progression as white is added. This way, you can examine the deepest color on most strips and get a much better feeling for the underlying tone of the lighter colors, whose nuances are otherwise pretty difficult to see.
Which fan deck would you rather select from?Then, we have other paint companies who have completely done away with chip samples all together! The standard for those of us who specify color is to narrow down the choices in the fan deck, then pull out a bigger chip to finalize the selection.
As you can tell, the bigger the area of color, the easier it is to get a sense of what it will look like.If you've selected paint colors from the strips available in most paint or hardware stores, how have you found that color translates onto bigger spaces? Did you notice any differences once the color went up?
photos by moi