Ask the Expert: Painting your House

Q: It seems like every time I try painting a room in my home, the colors seem wrong. Blah. Off. Is there something wrong with me? How can I get it right? Help!

A: It's not you! It's the paint!

The world of interior design is waking up! Waking up to vivid new paints that come alive, radiating energy and vitality into our world. A new twist of chemistry? Not at all. Designers are returning to their roots as artists, remembering how colors interact with our eyes, our brains and our world. And then bringing this science to our homes and offices with walls that POP!

Fine artists have been mixing truly beautiful colors for over a thousand years. Even though they've been limited to colorants on hand, they learned to mix their precious pigments into an amazing variety of colors. The trick was using lots of pigments, most of them in tiny amounts. And because black and gray pigments absorb light, artists have always avoided them when building colors.

You're probably wondering what artist's colors have to do with house paint...unfortunately, almost nothing when it comes to widely available commercial paints. The paints available in most home-improvement stores are formulated with one strategy in mind: Keep the costs down, so use as few colorants as possible. Since they aren't willing to add lots of pigments--generally 2-4 in a typical can of paint--they use black and gray to make colors appear more "natural". Unfortunately, adding black and/or gray deadens the color. The question then, is how to create color that is neither garish (without the black), nor dead (because black has been added).

Happily for all of us, artists have figured it out, and it's pretty darn brilliant. They use something called a complementary mixing system: take a little of the hue on the opposite of the color wheel (its complement), and it will soften the color naturally. So, if I want to ease a green color, I add red. To make it even richer, I'll add yellow and blue (they make green), and then I'll add their complements, violet and orange.

Of course, things aren't quite that simple. The primary reason paint colors are difficult to predict has to do with the actual pigments available. When you haven't played with a lot of color, green colorant seems like it should be, well, just green. But the pigment has to come from somewhere, and it has the signature of that place (even if it's from a lab). How it looks and plays in a can of paint has a huge impact on the color. For instance, the 'green' colorant that's used in about 90% of paint stores is actually teal. That's why picking a green paint is so difficult, it's mixed from that teal-looking green, usually with yellow or blue, and black. Since the green colorant itself is biased (towards blue) the resulting paint colors will always reflect that tendency. Whew! But that's why paint colors are so difficult to select!

All of this plays out in your living room or bedroom or kitchen. And if using standard commercial paints, it's probably not working out like you hope in most cases. There have been hundreds of customers through my paint studio on Tucson's east side who have chosen another paint company's color and had it turn out differently that they thought it would...the wheat color is a little mustard-green, and the tan has a mauve tone. What makes me crazy is that most people then tell themselves that they don't know color, when in fact the real problem stems from those paint companies making cheap, awkwardly biased colors. Every person knows the colors they love; the trick HAS been in picking the paint. Basically, the only way to get around the bias issue is to use a whole lot of pigments...and never black or gray. When you've got 8 to 15 pigments (as I do), the bias from each one is virtually eliminated.

I know this seems complicated, but stay with me. It's like a recipe for pumpkin pie, if cinnamon is the only spice you put in, the pie will taste of cinnamon. If you only add cloves, the pie will taste of cloves. But if instead, you add lots of spices, each adds to the flavor, but none will dominate. That subtle mixture of spices is what makes pumpkin pie such a distinctive dessert. Complexity of pigments in color allows the same "yumminess."

The most amazing thing about making paint with lots of pigments is how it changes and moves and plays with light. Because there aren't any black pigments, the shadows aren't gray. It turns out that shadows pick up on the pigments that are sitting the most quietly, the recessive ones, if you will. So my color #73 (Paris, a soft lavender), turns cobalt or red violet or purple based on the sun moving through the day. The shadows from #39 (Palo Verde, an earthy yellow-green) actually break into a little rainbow, and you can see its color parents (and aunts and uncles...it has 11 pigments!) radiating from the walls through the day.

This is probably a good place to talk about "computer color matching" services at paint stores. The matching is done with the exact program that went into creating their other colors; use two pigments and black or gray. The only way to match one of my colors is using an artist's eye and utilizing full spectrum technology. Otherwise, you get a wheat tone that looks kind of green etc.

On a basic level, that's how full spectrum mixing works: when you add enough pigments to soften and enrich the color, it goes beyond any individual element and becomes beautiful and real. Look at nature's colors for goodness sake. I mean really look! Walk away from your computer for a moment, and go look at a tree or a flower or a rock. Notice just how many colors there are in a square inch! Mama nature, the true goddess, doesn't dip lightly on her easel. She swirls and tiptoes and soars and dances and whispers and hollers with color.

So, how is it that we can bear to spend most of our lives in own homes and offices, surrounded by dead color? It's the largest square footage of space we've got, it creates the most feeling, and it's the cheapest interior design element you can buy (using full spectrum paints will cost about 30 cents per square foot, with two coats slathered on).

This all makes for some very time-consuming mixing and expensive ingredients. There are times when I look at my formulas and think, "Jeez, did I HAVE to use 14 pigments?" But, since I'm passionate about color and making paint easier for my customers, I get to focus on beauty. To really see the difference, come by my studio. We've got giant painted samples all over, little paint pots to sample the paint and color-trained staff. You can bring in swatches of tile or fabric you want to match, or just wander around. You will know the difference in the paint. And when you make it part of your life, you will discover just how amazing our world is when seen in full color.

Citron Paint & Design is at 7047 E. Tanque Verde Rd. Phone: 520-299-1442.