Communicating Color: Color Terminology to Help You Get What You Want

by Lauren Busser The House Designers’ Contributing Writer

Walking into a color center, you can easily get overwhelmed with the myriad of choices available to you. You may have an idea of what you want or maybe you have some fabric samples to try and match, but to get a color you will really be happy with you'll need a way to communicate it to the people at the store or to understand exactly what you want yourself. Everyone can picture a different shade of blue in their minds but with all the various tints, shades, and tones available it's sometimes difficult to grasp just what makes a particular shade of blue look the way it does.

This lively yellow tint from Benjamin Moore® gives the room good energy without being overbearing. The subtlety of the yellow provides just enough energy to encourage you to be productive in your home office.

Hue

When someone refers to hue they are identifying the general family of a color. A traditional color wheel is made up of twelve color families: red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, red-violet, violet, blue-violet.  If you can identify one of those families then you have a base color for all the other identifiers. You can get more specific by referring to saturation, tint, shade, or tone.

Saturation

The technical term used to describe color intensity is saturation. More saturated colors are vivid and strong and less saturated colors are washed out or muted. For example, gray would be considered zero saturation. Lighting also effects saturation. A painted wall can appear more saturated during the day and less saturated as the light fades. Different types of artificial lighting, such as halogen or tungsten light, can also affect saturation.

This Sherwin-Williams® living room uses a light brownish tone that gives off a very subtle color, complimented by Chippendale-style furniture and dark accent pieces.

Value

Value is the term that describes the lightness or darkness of a color. While tint and shade refer to whether a color is lighter or darker, the base value is a spectrum that crosses an entire series of colors. For example, on a scale of blues a pale baby blue will have a low value while a dark navy has a high value, with colors like aquamarine and cerulean in the center.

Tone

When gray is added to a color then a tone is created. Tones are muted versions of colors. Many people will refer to grayer versions of colors as tints or shades but it's correctly described as a tone.

The saturated red in this Benjamin Moore® bedroom is perfect for capturing the essence of faraway places.

Shades

A shade is what results when black is added to a color.  For example, navy is a shade of blue. The word is often used to describe any variation of the color.

Tint

On a scale of one to ten, if white is one and your base color is ten, any shade that falls in between those is a tint. A tint is what you get when you mix your base color with white, so any pale shade of a given color is referred to as a tint.

Now whether you are picturing that perfect shade of periwinkle or a beautiful vibrant Serrano red, these terms can help you communicate what you want to your interior designer, painter, or just the sales associate at the paint store.  Color selection doesn't have to be overwhelming. If you can communicate what you want, you are sure to get the exact paint color you will adore.