Jackson Antique

A mid-weight yellow undertone. H0108, from Vista Paint.

49.0 on the light-reflectance scale puts it in the middle third, which is the part of the scale with the fewest surprises. A chroma of 8.9 is enough to register as a real color choice, without the intensity that would force the rest of a room to match it.

Bedrooms and living rooms, where it is seen in lamplight as much as daylight. It holds up in a north-facing room, which is where warmth is usually missing. 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 41.3 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 49.0, 67 and 85, if you're matching by the numbers).

If the brand is not fixed, Valspar Sandy Sage (5008-1C) is the same color by measurement - delta-E 0.49. 5 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 holds the color truest; a subtle sheen will lift it half a shade under lamps.

It is lighter than 51 percent of the Vista Paint range. Light reflectance this exact is unusual: 3 colors in the whole catalog measure within a point of 49.0. Vista Paint lists it in the C codes, alongside 1,421 other colors.