Sedge

Mid-range in both light and color, which is the most forgiving place to be. 0226 in the Vista Paint range.

Light reflectance measures 40.0, which is enough to keep a room bright without bouncing light around. Chroma 11.6 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. Dunn-Edwards Lighthouse 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 50.3 points apart on the reflectance scale).

Rooms already built around blues and cool greys are the hardest fit for this color - the two are opposites, and opposites next to each other rarely feel calm.

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. For layering, pair this with a clearly lighter mid-tone on a secondary wall or cabinetry, and keep the ceiling close to white. The gap between each step should be big enough to see without thinking about it (roughly 40.0 / 63 / 85 on the reflectance scale).

By the numbers, Kilz Almost Sage (TB-88) and this color are indistinguishable - delta-E 0.83, well under what the eye can separate. This is not a rare shade: 6 colors from other brands sit within delta-E 2 of it. Matte or low-sheen suits it on walls; higher gloss will exaggerate the undertone.

It is lighter than 41 percent of the Vista Paint range. Vista Paint lists it in the C codes, alongside 1,421 other colors.