Monarch Wing

A color built for commitment, not for blending in. 7957, from Vista Paint.

A chroma of 74.0 is well into the range where the color affects everything nearby - light fixtures, glossy surfaces, even skin tones under it. Ideal for a single accent wall or a small room where you want to commit.

It holds up in a north-facing room, which is where warmth is usually missing. Light reflectance reads 44.0, though with this much color in it that number is the smaller half of the story.

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.

Wood tones next to this read darker and richer than they do against a paler wall; it is one of the more dependable effects of putting a light-absorbing color next to anything reflective. 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 44.0, 65 and 85, if you're matching by the numbers).

Dunn-Edwards Cloudless makes a good second wall color here - different enough to read as a real choice, close enough to still feel related (about 36.2 points apart in light reflectance). This is not a color that benefits from shine - the saturation does the work, and a flat finish lets it do that evenly.

For anyone tied to a different brand, Dunn-Edwards Orange Jewel (DEA115) is the nearest stand-in, at a delta-E of 1.09. Only 1 other-brand color land within delta-E 2 of this one, which makes it comparatively unusual.

It is lighter than 46 percent of the Vista Paint range. This is a crowded part of the scale - 465 colors measure within a point of 44.0 - so most brands will have something close. The name is not unique: Valspar 2008-1A also sells a color called Monarch Wing, and it is not the same shade. Among oranges it is one of the strongest: only 3 percent of them carry more colour. Vista Paint lists it in the K codes, alongside 1,318 other colors.