Highlight

Mid-range in both light and color, which is the most forgiving place to be. 0275, from Vista Paint.

Light reflectance measures 41.0, which is enough to keep a room bright without bouncing light around. A chroma of 19.4 is enough to register as a real color choice, without the intensity that would force the rest of a room to match it.

A dining room or study suits this kind of mid-depth color, where the room is used at different times of day under different light. In a room that gets little direct sun, this color's warmth does some of the work daylight would otherwise be doing. Dunn-Edwards Lighthouse makes a good second wall color here - different enough to read as a real choice, close enough to still feel related (about 49.3 points apart in light reflectance).

Worth checking before committing to a full wall: blues and cool greys nearby - in a floor, a rug, a piece of furniture - will read as a clash here, not a complement, since the two colors sit at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Anything pale placed against this wall will look paler than it is; anything warm-metal will look warmer. Neither is an illusion the color plays deliberately - it is simple contrast, but worth planning rather than discovering. The safest multi-color scheme moves from this dark wall to a noticeably lighter secondary tone, then to a near-white ceiling - three genuinely different depths rather than three shades of the same idea (LRV 41.0, 63 and 85, if you're matching by the numbers).

Benjamin Moore Huntington Beige (HC-21) matches it closely enough that no one will tell them apart on a wall. 4 other-brand colors land within delta-E 2 of this one - a well-populated part of the spectrum with several near-equivalents to choose from. Matte or low-sheen suits it on walls; higher gloss will exaggerate the undertone.

It is lighter than 42 percent of the Vista Paint range. The name is not unique: Behr 420C-1 also sells a color called Highlight, and it is not the same shade. Vista Paint lists it in the C codes, alongside 1,421 other colors.