Colour Matters

True Product Colour

Consider the following scenario:

After months of shopping for carpet for your new lounge, you’ve finally selected a subtle beige, a warm tan, not quite camel, not honey, but a very nice quiet tan tone that will co-ordinate nicely with the wooden tones of your furniture. A week later, as the carpet is being installed, you’re shocked to see a pasty grey hue on the floor.

Welcome to the world of metamerism!

Metamerism is a phenomenon that occurs when colours change when viewed in different light sources.

In the case of the carpet, the flooring was displayed in a showroom lit by warm incandescent lighting and installed in an office with cool fluorescent lighting. This cooler lighting is famous for sucking the life out of beige.

These surprises can be prevented by examining interior products under the same lighting of the intended space or by obtaining samples and viewing them in the lighting conditions of the space. The time of the day (morning, noon, late afternoon), the direction of natural light (north, south, etc.) as well as weather and seasonal conditions (overcast, rainy, sunny, winter, summer) also affect colour. Reflected light from large coloured surfaces such as walls and ceilings may also cause colour mutations.

When selecting paint, colour surprises can be avoided by applying brush-outs to large areas on walls. This is the only way to truly preview interior and exterior paint colors.

Keeping all these variables in mind, you can still get some idea of a colour match using these guidelines:

1) Do not stand in direct sunlight. Sunlight will affect your eyes' ability to see beyond the shine of the material to the colour

2) If a colour matches under both indoor lighting and daylight, it could still have characteristics of metamerism due to different dye classifications and processes.

3) The colors that are most likely to have metameric problems include taupe, mauve, lilac, tan, celadon, grey/blues, and greys.

Incandescent Lighting

Another common indoor light is incandescent (typical household bulbs) lighting, sometimes referred to as "Candlelight". Often a customer purchases an item in store lighting (Cool white fluorescent) then goes home and looks at the item (shoes) next to the target colour (dress) and calls back the next day unhappy. The best cure is prevention in this case.

Using an incandescent light nearby to turn on when assessing the colour and to show during final assessment can give a realistic idea of what the colour will look like when ordering, as well as before taking the item home.

Frosted 40, 60, or 100 watt bulbs are suitable standard bulbs available almost anywhere.

The full article, "Colour in the Retail Environment" by Ian Barclay, Director of Colour Operations for Colortec/Dyeables can be found at http://www.colormatters.com/r_barclay.html