In other words, once the colors are up in a space or on an exterior, I think it would be hard to tell one is lighter than the other. They’re different in terms of luminance, how much light they reflect and conversely how much they absorb but they look similar in terms of lightness and brightness. Mindful has an LRV of 48, Dorian Gray LRV 39 – HOWEVER – perceptually they both have a Value very close to 7.

That’s why I illustrate Value with an eyeball icon and LRV with a sunshine icon in the Colorography charts. It tells you how bright/light that luminance *looks*, how it’s perceived by the human eye. It tells you how light a color literally *is*. This is where having both LRV and Value included in a Colorography comes in handy.īecause LRV a.k.a. Let me explain a little more about what I mean. If it were interior instead of exterior, then the slight difference in luminance a.k.a. That’s not a big enough difference to worry about when the colors are being applied exterior because that nominal difference will be a wash outdoors in the sunlight. The difference if you subtract the LRVs (48 – 39) is only nine. It’s true that Mindful Gray is lighter and brighter than Dorian Gray but not by much.

Was Dorian Gray too dark for an exterior? Would Mindful Gray be a better choice for an exterior color scheme because it had a lighter LRV of 39? Will a higher LRV make a home look brighter and more cheerful? The dilemma stemmed from the fact that Dorian Gray has an LRV 39 and Mindful Gray has an LRV of 48. So, it wasn’t much of a surprise when I was asked to explain the difference between the two. Mindful Gray and Dorian Gray – When you see these two colors next to each other on strip #244 in the Sherwin-Williams Color Snap fandeck, they look almost identical.

Mindful grey sherwin williams