Reading a Room's Light Before You Choose a Colour

Reading a room's light before you choose a colour

Almost every colour that disappoints was chosen in the wrong place. A card viewed in a showroom, or against a white wall, or at four in the afternoon, tells you very little about how that pigment will behave in the room you actually live in.

Start with orientation

North-facing rooms receive cool, steady, indirect light all day, which drains warmth from a colour and exaggerates grey and blue. South-facing rooms receive warm light that shifts markedly from morning to evening. East and west rooms are effectively two different rooms before and after noon. The same paint will read as four different colours across these four aspects.

Look at what the light passes

Light rarely arrives clean. It bounces off a brick wall opposite, a garden, a neighbour's render, and arrives carrying that colour with it. A room facing a green garden receives green light in summer and grey light in winter, which is why a scheme can look perfect in June and wrong in January.

Test large, test in place

Paint at least an A2 patch, in two coats, on more than one wall — never on a single wall next to a window, where it will always look lighter. Better still, paint a large sheet of card you can move around the room and prop where the sofa will sit.

Look at it three times

Morning, mid-afternoon, and after dark under the lamps you will actually use. Artificial light is where most schemes fail, because the room is chosen in daylight and lived in at night.

Then choose the finish

Sheen changes colour as much as pigment does. The same shade in matt and eggshell will not read as the same colour on the wall.

General guidance from the studio's own specification process, not a substitute for testing in your own rooms.