Mineral Water

Pale enough to open a room, with a yellow undertone strong enough to still read as a deliberate choice. Vista Paint catalogs it as Mineral Water, 0272.

At LRV 66.0 it sits where most rooms want a wall: light enough to feel open, dark enough to have a surface. A chroma of 11.3 is enough to register as a real color choice, without the intensity that would force the rest of a room to match it.

Warm bulbs make it warmer still; daylight bulbs cool it back toward neutral. Works well in rooms that need brightness but where a plain white feels too cold or too clinical. 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 24.3 points apart in light reflectance).

By the numbers, Behr Roman Plaster (PPU7-10) and this color are indistinguishable - delta-E 0.52, well under what the eye can separate. This color reads consistently across most finishes, so the choice can come down to durability needs rather than how it changes the color.

It is lighter than 69 percent of the Vista Paint range. This is a crowded part of the scale - 861 colors measure within a point of 66.0 - so most brands will have something close. The name is not unique: Behr 540C-1 also sells a color called Mineral Water, and it is not the same shade. Vista Paint lists it in the C codes, alongside 1,421 other colors.