Rain Barrel

A mid-weight yellow undertone. Vista Paint's designation for it is H0113.

At LRV 31.0 it sits where most rooms want a wall: light enough to feel open, dark enough to have a surface. Chroma 8.3 keeps the yellow undertone present without letting it run the room.

Works as a whole-room color in spaces that are lived in rather than passed through, where its depth has time to register. In a room that gets little direct sun, this color's warmth does some of the work daylight would otherwise be doing. PPG Moon Lily 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 48 points apart on the reflectance scale).

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.

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. 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 31.0, 58 and 85 on the light-reflectance scale, for reference).

Switching brands, Valspar Coastal Villa (6005-2A) is the closest equivalent at delta-E 1.11, near enough for most rooms. This is not a rare shade: 5 colors from other brands sit within delta-E 2 of it. A satin finish is worth it in a room that needs to be wiped down often, at the cost of showing a bit more of the wall's surface than a flat finish would.

It is lighter than 28 percent of the Vista Paint range. This is a crowded part of the scale - 543 colors measure within a point of 31.0 - so most brands will have something close. The name is not unique: PPG 1097-6 also sells a color called Rain Barrel, and it is not the same shade. Vista Paint lists it in the C codes, alongside 1,421 other colors.