Merry Meredith

This is the kind of pink that works in more rooms than it does not, which is rarer than it sounds. 8711, from Vista Paint.

Light reflectance measures 27.0, which is enough to keep a room bright without bouncing light around. A chroma of 15.9 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. Warm bulbs will soften it; daylight bulbs push it further cool. Vista Paint Loyalist makes a good second wall color here - different enough to read as a real choice, close enough to still feel related (about 53 points apart in light reflectance).

This color sits right on the line between pink and red - cooler light nudges it toward red, warmer light keeps it in pink (about 0° apart on the color wheel, for anyone measuring). This color and greens don't get along in the same room - they sit on opposite sides of the spectrum, so pairing them tends to feel like tension rather than contrast.

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. If the room needs more than one wall color, keep the steps far apart: this color, then something clearly lighter for a second surface, then a bright white above. Two similar tones just look like a mismatch; three distinct ones read as a plan (about 27.0 to 56 to 85 in LRV terms).

For anyone tied to a different brand, PPG Keepsake Rose (1045-5) is the nearest stand-in, at a delta-E of 2.66. No other brand has a color within delta-E 2 of this one - a genuinely uncommon shade. Matte or low-sheen suits it on walls; higher gloss will exaggerate the undertone.

It is lighter than 25 percent of the Vista Paint range. Vista Paint lists it in the K codes, alongside 1,318 other colors.