Use The Right Light Bulb To Find The Best Paint Colour For Your Walls

Use The Right Light Bulb To Find The Best Paint Colour For Your Walls

Choosing the right paint colour can be tricky, and lighting can change the results. Apartment Therapy explains how different types of light bulbs can affect the way your paint looks.

Picture: Marc Lacoste/Flickr

Dabney Frake discusses the use of light, from thinking directionally (where is the light coming from) to considering the time of day. More interestingly, the light bulb you use will show the paint in a different light, affecting the colour, and possibly making it look different than it did in the store you bought the paint from. Using the right light bulb in the room ensures the paint looks the same on your own walls. Frake even threw in some specifics:

  • Incandescent: Warmer light that enhances red, yellows, and oranges. Downplays cooler colours
  • Fluorescents: Cooler light that enhances blues and greens, and diminishes warmer hues.
  • LEDs: More flexible than the other bulbs and looks good with most paint colours.
  • CFLs: Depends on the bulb, so check the Kelvin rating. The lower the number, the warmer the bulb. Full spectrum bulbs mimic daylight.
  • Halogen: Also closely resembles daylight, and makes colours stand out more.

The other tips in the article are really useful too, so hit the link below to check them out.

How to Choose the Perfect Paint Colour? Look at the Light [Apartment Therapy]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments