Chasm

A color built for commitment, not for blending in. 0172, from Vista Paint.

A chroma of 23.1 is well into the range where the color affects everything nearby - light fixtures, glossy surfaces, even skin tones under it. Ideal for a single accent wall or a small room where you want to commit.

In a room that gets little direct sun, this color's warmth does some of the work daylight would otherwise be doing. Light reflectance reads 16.0, though with this much color in it that number is the smaller half of the story.

If the room already has blues and cool greys in the floor, a rug, or the furniture, this color will fight it rather than sit well beside it - the two sit at opposite ends of the color spectrum, which is exactly why they clash instead of blend.

Wood tones next to this read darker and richer than they do against a paler wall; it is one of the more dependable effects of putting a light-absorbing color next to anything reflective. A natural scheme here moves in three clear steps: this color on the main wall, a noticeably lighter mid-tone for a second wall or built-in, and a near-white on the ceiling. Each jump should be obvious at a glance, not something you have to squint to tell apart (roughly 16.0, 51 and 85 on the light-reflectance scale, for reference).

Behr High Speed Access makes a good second wall color here - different enough to read as a real choice, close enough to still feel related (about 35 points apart in light reflectance). This is not a color that benefits from shine - the saturation does the work, and a flat finish lets it do that evenly.

If the brand is not fixed, Dunn-Edwards Neutral Valley (DE6119) is the same color by measurement - delta-E 0.96. This is not a rare shade: 4 colors from other brands sit within delta-E 2 of it.

It is lighter than 14 percent of the Vista Paint range. Among tans it is one of the strongest: only 2 percent of them carry more colour. Vista Paint lists it in the C codes, alongside 1,421 other colors.