Mandalay Road

Strong enough that it sets the palette for the room, not the other way around. 0039 in the Vista Paint range.

Chroma 30.5 is high enough that the color will bounce onto light surfaces, so expect it everywhere, not only on the wall. In a room with plenty of natural light, this can cover more wall area than it could in a dim one, where the same color reads heavier.

Afternoon sun will push the red further warm; if that reads as too much, a cooler bulb in the room can pull it back. LRV 19.0 tells you how much light comes back, which matters less here than how much color comes with it.

Not quite orange, not quite red - this sits right where the two meet, so the room's own lighting ends up deciding which one you actually see. 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.

The lighter the trim beside this, the more it will seem to glow - a side effect of the light-reflectance gap rather than anything special about the trim color. 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 19.0, 52 and 85 on the light-reflectance scale, for reference).

Benjamin Moore Sidewalk Gray pairs well as a second surface - close enough in feel to belong in the same room, far enough in lightness to read as two distinct walls (about 42.2 points apart on the reflectance scale). Matte suits a color this strong - a glossier sheen would turn every light source in the room into a visible hotspot on the wall.

Behr Orange Flambe (MQ1-28) runs close enough - delta-E 2.7 - that swapping brands should not change how the room looks. Across the other brands, nothing lands within delta-E 2 of this one - there is no easy substitute.

It is lighter than 16 percent of the Vista Paint range. Vista Paint lists it in the C codes, alongside 1,421 other colors.