Gaugin's Blue

A color with enough presence that "accent" is really the only honest use for it. Vista Paint catalogs it as Gaugin's Blue, 7344.

A chroma of 22.1 is well into the range where the color affects everything nearby - light fixtures, glossy surfaces, even skin tones under it. A powder room or a nook is often the right scale for a color this strong - enough impact without living with it in every sightline.

Warm bulbs will soften it; daylight bulbs push it further cool. Light reflectance reads 43.0, though with this much color in it that number is the smaller half of the story.

Rooms already built around oranges and warm terracotta are the hardest fit for this color - the two are opposites, and opposites next to each other rarely feel calm.

Next to it, white trim reads brighter and cooler than it does anywhere else in the house - the gap in light reflectance is what does that, not the trim paint itself. For layering, pair this with a clearly lighter mid-tone on a secondary wall or cabinetry, and keep the ceiling close to white. The gap between each step should be big enough to see without thinking about it (roughly 43.0 / 64 / 85 on the reflectance scale).

Vista Paint Light Lavendar makes a good second wall color here - different enough to read as a real choice, close enough to still feel related (about 42 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.

Across the other brands, nothing lands within delta-E 2 of this one - there is no easy substitute.

It is lighter than 44 percent of the Vista Paint range. Vista Paint lists it in the K codes, alongside 1,318 other colors.