Reference
Glossary
Working meanings for the words on chips, bulb boxes and in this course, each marked with the kind of statement it usually appears in.
Type to filter by any word in a term or its meaning. Click a kind to show only that kind; click it again to clear. Entries are alphabetical, with 60/30/10 first.
| Term | Meaning | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| 60/30/10 | A rule of thumb for spreading a palette: about 60 percent of what you see in one color (usually walls and floor), 30 percent in a second (large furniture, curtains), 10 percent in a third (cushions, art, a door). It is a starting point for proportion, not a law, and you are never graded against it; Module 6 tries other distributions and shows rooms where a different one suits what the household wanted better. The numbers describe visible area, not the number of colors you own. | Convention |
| Accent | The smallest role in a palette: the color used in little doses (a cushion, a lamp, a door, one painting) so that it stands out against the larger surfaces. An accent works by contrast with what surrounds it, which is why the same color can be an accent in one room and the dominant color in another. A single accent that appears nowhere else can be a deliberate choice. | Term |
| Adaptation (chromatic adaptation) | Your eyes adjust to whatever light is in the room, so a white wall tends to look white under a warm bulb and still looks broadly white under a cool one, even though a camera would show two quite different colors. This is why a bulb's color is hard to judge by staring at the wall; hold a known white (printer paper) against it, or compare two lamps side by side. | Physical principle |
| Analogous | A palette built from hues that sit next to each other on the color wheel (blue, blue-green, green, say, on the painter's wheel the course uses). Neighbors on the wheel tend to read as related, and many people find an analogous scheme quiet. It is one of the relationship conventions Module 6 offers as a starting point, not a requirement. | Convention |
| Anchor | The fixed element you choose to build the palette around: a floor, a counter, a rug, a sofa you are keeping. The anchor is not necessarily the most beautiful thing in the room; it is the thing that is not changing and that every other color will be compared with. Module 5 shows how to pick one. | Term |
| Area effect (size effect) | The same color can look different over a large area than in a small patch. The CIE's technical report CIE 208:2014, Effect of Stimulus Size on Colour Appearance, describes laboratory studies in which a large stimulus tended to look lighter and higher in chroma than a small one, with some hue shifts; studies in real settings do not always agree, and the amount varies from room to room. Konica Minolta's explainer makes the everyday version of the point: a color on a large area such as a painted wall tends to look brighter and more vivid than a small swatch. So a wall often looks lighter and more colorful than its chip, not darker. Look at a sample at a useful size in the room. | Physical principle |
| Balance | A designer's word for distributing visual weight (dark, strong or busy color) so that one side or one corner of a room does not pull all the attention. That darker things look heavier is a measured perception finding (Module 6 cites the study); that high-chroma colors weigh more too, and how to balance a room with either, is convention. A small amount of a heavy color can balance a large amount of a light one. How much balance you want is a taste, and a deliberately lopsided room is a legitimate choice. | Convention |
| Bridge color | A color that shares something with two others (the same hue family as one, a similar value or warmth as the other) so that the two read as belonging together. At Juniper Court (Module 6), a warm gray-brown that sits between the rust sofa and the cool quartz is a bridge: it reads cool next to the rust and warm next to the quartz. Designers reach for one when two fixed things seem to disagree. | Convention |
| Brush-out (sample board) | A real paint sample brushed onto a piece of poster board, foam board or primed card, so that it can be moved around the room, held against the floor and the sofa, and looked at in sun, shade and lamplight. Benjamin Moore's sampling page recommends brushing out at least two coats for the most accurate color. A board is most useful when the existing wall is dark or strongly colored, when you may not paint, or when kneeling and reaching are hard; a patch painted straight on the wall is useful too, especially on a white or light neutral wall, because it shows the color in place at a useful size. Module 9 covers when each helps. | Term |
| CCT (correlated color temperature) and kelvin | The number on a bulb box, in kelvin (K), that says whether the light leans yellow or blue. Lower numbers are warmer: about 2700 K is the familiar warm glow, 3000 K is often called soft white, 3500 K neutral and 4100 K cool, using the four bands on the U.S. Department of Energy's bulb-buying page. Bulbs sold as "daylight" generally have a higher, bluer color temperature than "warm white" ones; read the kelvin number on the box. When replacing one bulb among several, the DOE suggests matching the CCT already in the room. CCT is a summary, not the whole color of the light: the DOE's LED color fact sheet notes that two sources with the same CCT can look different, one slightly greenish and one slightly pinkish, so compare bulbs side by side. | Term |
| Chip (paint chip) | The free printed card of a paint color from a store rack. A chip is printed ink, not paint, and it is small and usually seen against white card or other chips, so a color can look different over a whole wall in your light (often lighter and more colorful; see area effect). It is excellent for comparing and sorting (Modules 2 and 3) and for shortlisting (Module 8), and not enough on its own to decide. | Term |
| Chroma | How strong or muted a color is: how far it sits from a gray of the same lightness. A fire-engine red and a dusty rose can share hue and differ mainly in chroma and value. Many people choose low to moderate chroma for large surfaces and keep high chroma for smaller doses; that is a convention and a common comfort level, and a strongly colored wall is a legitimate choice. | Term |
| Color rendering | How faithfully a light source shows the colors of the things it falls on. Two bulbs with the same kelvin number can render a rug very differently, and, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's LED color fact sheet, two with the same kelvin number and the same CRI may still not render colors the same way. The common measure is CRI (see that entry). A high kelvin number says nothing about rendering; "daylight" bulbs are not automatically good at showing color. Looking at your own things under the bulb is the test. | Term |
| Color vision deficiency | Seeing some colors differently from most people. The National Eye Institute describes red-green types (the most common), blue-yellow types, and the rare complete absence of color vision, and notes that some types also make certain colors look less bright. A clear light-dark difference often helps where hues are hard to tell apart, but not for everyone, so this course pairs value contrast with text labels, never conveys information by color alone, and suggests checking real edges with the people who need them. | Physical principle |
| Color wheel | A circle arranging hues so that neighbors sit together and opposites sit across. Different wheels disagree (painters' red-yellow-blue, screens' red-green-blue, printers' cyan-magenta-yellow, Munsell's five principal hues), so it is a useful map rather than a fact of nature. This course uses the traditional painter's (RYB) wheel; when a pair is called opposite or complementary here, it is on that wheel. For a home its job is to tell you which families are neighbors, which are opposites and which three are evenly spaced (a triad: four steps apart on a twelve-hue wheel). | Convention |
| Complementary | Two hues directly across the wheel from each other. On the painter's (RYB) wheel the course uses, the pairs are red and green, orange and blue, and yellow and violet; screen (RGB) wheels put different pairs opposite (blue sits across from yellow there), so say which wheel you mean. Set side by side at similar chroma, complements tend to make each other look stronger, a simultaneous-contrast effect; whether you want that liveliness in a living room is taste. Muted versions (a rust, which is a muted orange, beside a dusty blue) are a common, quieter use. Plenty of good pairings are not complementary at all. | Convention |
| Confirmed (workbook status) | The status you give a decision when it has been tested physically and you would be comfortable buying on it, or a fixed material that is not changing. The practical minimum is real paint (or the actual item) in the room beside the main fixed things it will live with, looked at once in daylight and once at the hours the room is mostly used, with a line or two noted; that is enough for most decisions. Several days, other weather and more walls are optional extra checks for hard or expensive choices. Nothing is confirmed by a chip, a screen or a photograph alone. See also provisional and unresolved. | Term |
| Contrast | The amount of difference between two things that sit together. There are four kinds, one for each attribute: value contrast (light against dark, the kind that most often defines edges and that often stays visible when hue differences fade, though needs vary), hue contrast (different families), chroma contrast (strong against muted) and temperature contrast (warmer against cooler). When a room feels off, name which kind is missing or accidental. | Term |
| Cool | Leaning toward blue, green or violet, relative to something else. "Cooler than" is a comparison you can make reliably between two chips; "cool" on its own is a label, and the feelings people attach to it (calm, clinical, fresh) vary by person and culture. The course never promises an emotional effect from a cool color. | Preference |
| CRI (color rendering index) | A 0 to 100 number a bulb maker reports for how faithfully the bulb shows colors compared with a reference light. The U.S. Department of Energy's buying guidance uses it as the measure of color rendering, ENERGY STAR's former bulb specification required at least 80 until that program ended at the end of 2024 (the DOE page still cites it, and many bulbs still meet it), and the DOE's color-tunable page suggests at least 80 as a rule of thumb for warm-dim products. The DOE's LED color fact sheet adds the limits: CRI should serve only as a rough guideline, two sources with the same CCT and CRI may not render colors the same way, a lower-CRI source can sometimes render objects more pleasingly than a higher one, and R9 is the score for a strong red sample. Where color matters, 90 or above is a widely used rule of thumb, not a standard. A higher CRI makes faithful reds and wood tones more likely, not certain; look at your own things under the bulb. | Term |
| Daylight | Light from the sky and sun through your windows. It changes by hour, by weather, by season and by what is outside the window (a brick wall, a lawn, snow), which is why the course asks you to look rather than rely on a compass reading. Daylight is a useful reference for comparing chips; the hours the room is used matter most for the final choice, with lamplight checked at those hours. | Term |
| Daylight bulb | A marketing label. Bulbs sold as "daylight" generally have a higher, bluer color temperature than "warm white" ones; the name does not mean the bulb reproduces daylight, so read the kelvin number on the box. How well such a bulb shows colors is a separate question; CRI is a rough guide to it, and looking is the test. | Product-specific |
| Dominant | The role of the color that covers the largest visible area in a room, usually walls or floor. In the 60/30/10 convention it is the 60. The dominant color sets what everything else is compared with, which is why it is often, by convention, low in chroma and why its warmth relative to the floor can matter more than its name. A strong dominant color is a legitimate choice. | Convention |
| Eggshell | A low sheen, a little more light-reflecting than flat, named for the surface of an egg. Where it sits in a maker's range, and what it is called, varies by brand; both Benjamin Moore's and Sherwin-Williams' finish pages lay out their own ladders. According to Benjamin Moore's FAQ, its sample jars come in eggshell; Behr's page says its peel-and-stick samples do too, so a flat or satin candidate should be sampled in the sheen you will buy. | Product-specific |
| Emphasis | Giving one thing in a room more of the attention: a fireplace wall, a painting, a doorway. Color creates emphasis through contrast (a strong or dark color against quieter surroundings). "A room with everything emphasized has nothing emphasized" is a common designer's saying and the usual argument for keeping most surfaces muted; it is a convention, and a room with more than one focal point, or with strong color throughout, can be exactly what someone wants. | Convention |
| Fan deck | A bound fan of a manufacturer's paint chips, usually sold rather than given away, covering that maker's whole range. The free chip rack at a store is the same information in loose form. A deck from one brand tells you nothing about matches in another brand; see metamerism. | Product-specific |
| Fixed element | Anything in the home that will not change during the project: floors, tile, counters, cabinets, brick, a landlord's walls, the sofa you are keeping. Module 1 inventories them; Module 5 builds around them. In this course the fixed elements are the brief, not the problem. | Term |
| Flat / matte | The least light-reflecting sheen, which hides surface flaws best and shows little glare. Makers differ on whether "flat" and "matte" are the same product and on how scrubbable each is; Benjamin Moore's and Sherwin-Williams' finish pages describe their own. Flat is a common ceiling choice by convention, and a common wall choice when the walls are imperfect. | Product-specific |
| Gloss (high gloss) | The most light-reflecting sheen. It shows bumps and brush marks (Benjamin Moore's finish page cautions that higher gloss shows imperfections), can look lighter where it catches reflections, and is used mostly on doors, trim and furniture. Sheen changes how a color looks, so a color sampled in eggshell and bought in gloss is a different decision. | Product-specific |
| Greige | A marketing word for a low-chroma color somewhere between gray and beige. One brand's greige leans pink, another's green, another's yellow, so the word tells you almost nothing. Describe it instead by attributes: light or mid value, very low chroma, and warmer or cooler than the floor it will sit beside. | Term |
| Hex value (screen color) | A six-character code such as #c9955a that tells a screen what to display. Every swatch on this site is one, and every one is approximate. A hex value never identifies a paint, an undertone, a manufacturer's LRV or a cross-brand match; in the workbook, the record of a paint is brand, name or code, product line and sheen, with the swatch as an optional reminder. | Term |
| Hue | The color family: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and the families between. Most home colors belong to a family only faintly (a gray-green, a pinkish beige). The same hue can look like two different colors at two values; a pale pink and a deep burgundy can belong to the same red family. | Term |
| Interreflection (reflected light) | Light that bounces off one surface onto another carries some of the first surface's color, so the color of the light can vary from place to place in a room depending on the colors of the furnishings, the lighting and the room's shape (Yu, Eisemann and Pont, 2019, in the journal Perception). A strongly colored floor, wall or sofa can tint what is near it; how much it shows in a particular room is something to look at, not predict. It is one reason a sample is worth seeing in the room beside the things it will live with. | Physical principle |
| Light log | The course's record of what the light in a room actually does. The practical minimum is a look in daylight and a look at the hours the room is mostly used, with a line or two noted; more times of day, several days and different weather are optional depth for hard decisions. It replaces guesses based on compass direction with observation. The light observation log is the workbook tool; Module 4 teaches it. | Term |
| Lightness | Another word for value: how light or dark a color is, from white to black. The screen tools on this site show an approximate lightness number (0 to 100) to help you compare two colors; it is a screen calculation, not a paint's LRV. | Term |
| LRV (light reflectance value) | A manufacturer's measured percentage of the visible light a paint color reflects, from 0 (reflects none) to 100 (reflects all). It describes depth, how light or dark the color is, and nothing else: not warmth, not undertone, not how bright your bulbs are, and not a guarantee that a room will feel bright, because a high-LRV color in a dim room is still dim. Each maker measures its own products and prints the number in its own place (on the chip, on the product page); do not infer one from a screen color. | Product-specific |
| Lumens | How much light a bulb puts out. Watts measure the electricity it uses, which no longer predicts brightness, so the U.S. Department of Energy says to buy by lumens. Lumens say nothing about the color of the light; that is CCT and CRI. | Term |
| Masstone (mass tone) | A paint-making term: the color of a paint applied thickly enough that the surface underneath cannot show through, as Golden Artist Colors' Color Mixing Guide defines it. Its partner term is undertone, the color seen when the paint is spread very thinly over white. Masstone is not a name for how a color looks over a whole wall. A wall can look different from its chip for several separate reasons: the area effect, different light, different surroundings, reflected light, and the difference between a printed chip and real paint. | Term |
| Metamerism | Two colors that match under one light and stop matching under another, because they reflect different mixes of wavelengths that happened to add up the same way in the first light. It is why a color matched across brands can agree in the store and disagree at home, why a fabric can "match" a paint by day and not by lamplight, and why Benjamin Moore's FAQ cautions about cross-brand matching. | Physical principle |
| Monochromatic | A palette built from one hue family at several values and chromas: a pale green wall, a mid green curtain, a deep green door. Many people find it calm and unified; it is easier than it sounds because the floor and the furniture usually bring other hues whether you plan them or not. | Convention |
| Munsell | The color system, from Albert Munsell's early 1900s work, that describes every color by hue, value and chroma and writes it as H V/C. Its vocabulary is the one this course uses. Munsell's own pages explain that the maximum chroma a color can reach depends on its hue and value, which is why some families have no vivid light version and others no vivid dark one. | Term |
| Neutral | In this course, a very low-chroma color: grays, off-whites, beiges, taupes, charcoals. "Neutral" does not mean "has no color." Most neutrals lean somewhere faintly, and that lean is what people call an undertone and what shows up when the neutral sits next to your floor. | Term |
| North light (compass-direction conventions) | The habit of predicting a room's light from the direction its windows face: "north rooms are cool and even," "west rooms go orange in the evening," and so on. Sherwin-Williams has a page of these; the course treats them as a hypothesis to check by looking, because trees, neighbors, overhangs, weather and bulbs can override them, and because the north and south conventions swap in the southern hemisphere. | Convention |
| Off-white | A white with enough chroma to lean visibly somewhere (yellow, pink, gray, green) when it is next to a cleaner white. Most "white" paints are off-whites, and makers group theirs by lean; Benjamin Moore's white-paint guide is one maker's tour of its own. Which off-white suits your room is settled by comparison with the trim, the floor and the light. | Term |
| On approval | Taking a rug, a fabric or a cushion home with the seller's agreement that you can return it after seeing it in the room. Terms differ by seller (how long, whether a deposit is held, what condition it must come back in), so ask before you leave. It is the textile equivalent of a sample board, and Module 10 relies on it. | Product-specific |
| Palette | The small set of colors a room or a home will use, each with a role (dominant, secondary, accent, trim) and a surface. A palette is not a shopping list; it is the plan that a shopping list is checked against. The palette builder holds yours. | Term |
| Peel-and-stick sample | A sheet of real paint on an adhesive backing that you stick to the wall, move and reuse. According to Benjamin Moore's FAQ its sheets are reusable and movable; according to Behr's sampling page its sheets come in one sheen, so a color you will buy in another sheen should also be sampled from a pot. Benjamin Moore's sampling page adds that sheets can be wrapped around edges to see light and dark corners. A sheet is real paint in one sheen and a fixed size; move it, and look at it at the hours you use the room. | Product-specific |
| Primer | An undercoat applied before paint, for adhesion, for sealing a surface, or for covering a strong color before a lighter one. Whether you need it, and which one, depends on the surface and the product; Benjamin Moore's FAQ gives that maker's guidance, and the can and technical data sheet of the paint you buy govern. The course does not teach surface preparation. | Product-specific |
| Proportion | How much of each palette color is visible: the share of the room each one covers. Many designers find proportion matters as much as the colors themselves: three colors in equal thirds can feel unsettled to many people, and the same three in unequal shares often settle. That is a convention to try, not a rule. Module 6 and the proportion preview in the palette builder let you compare distributions against what you said you wanted. | Convention |
| Provisional (workbook status) | The status for a decision you have reasoned your way to but not yet tested in the room: a shortlisted color, an undertone judged from a chip, a bulb choice not yet bought. Most of the workbook is provisional until Module 9. It is an honest and useful state, not a failure. | Term |
| Repetition | Using the same color, or the same hue family, in more than one place so that a room, or a run of rooms, reads as planned: the rug's red turned up again in a cushion two rooms away. Repetition is the main tool Module 7 uses to connect rooms. It is a convention, not a requirement; too much of it can feel monotonous, which is why it is paired with variation, and a color that appears only once can be deliberate. | Convention |
| Sample pot | A small container of real paint sold for testing. According to Benjamin Moore's FAQ, its sample is an 8 oz jar in eggshell, enough for about a 2 ft square; other makers' sizes and sheens differ. Brushed out in at least two coats (Benjamin Moore's sampling page recommends at least two for the most accurate color), on a board or on the wall, it shows real paint, which a printed chip cannot. It is the only paint purchase the course asks for before the final decision. | Product-specific |
| Satin | A mid sheen, more reflective than eggshell and less than semi-gloss, often used where walls get wiped (kitchens, hallways, children's rooms). Names and positions vary by maker: the finish pages of Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams each describe their own ladder, and they do not line up exactly. More sheen generally means more reflection and more visible imperfection. | Product-specific |
| Saturation | An everyday near-synonym for chroma: how strong or muted a color is. Color scientists distinguish saturation, chroma and colorfulness; you need not. "Desaturated," "muted," "dusty" and "grayed" all mean lower chroma. | Term |
| Scheme | A palette together with its distribution: which color goes where, in what amount, in what sheen. "Build a scheme" means decide all of that for a room; "connect the scheme" means carry parts of it into the next room. The room-by-room schedule records a scheme surface by surface. | Term |
| Secondary | The role of the second-largest color in a room: a sofa, curtains, a rug, a large cabinet. In the 60/30/10 convention it is the 30. By convention it often carries more chroma or more contrast than the dominant color and less than the accent. | Convention |
| Semi-gloss | A high sheen short of full gloss, the common choice by convention for trim, doors and cabinets because it wipes clean and catches a little light. Like every sheen name it is defined by each maker for its own products; check the finish page of the brand you are buying. The same color can look different in semi-gloss than in flat, lighter where it catches reflections, so sample in the sheen you will buy. | Product-specific |
| Shade | A hue with black added: darker, and usually a little more muted. In everyday speech "shade" means any variant of a color ("a shade of blue"); in this course it means specifically the darker direction, as tint means the lighter one and tone the grayer one. | Term |
| Sheen | How much light a dried paint surface reflects, from flat through eggshell, satin and semi-gloss to gloss. Sheen can change the apparent color (higher sheen shows reflections and can look lighter where it catches them), hides or reveals surface flaws, and affects wipeability. The names and steps are each maker's own, which is why the course separates the color decision from the product decision and asks you to sample in the sheen you will buy. | Product-specific |
| Sightline | What you can see from one standing position, including through doorways into other rooms. Colors that share a sightline are seen together whether or not they are in the same room, so they are worth choosing together. Module 7 maps them; the room connections tool records them. | Term |
| Simultaneous contrast | A color tends to appear to shift away from whatever surrounds it: lighter on a dark ground, darker on a light one, cooler next to a warm color, warmer next to a cool one, and more vivid against its complement. Josef Albers built a whole course of cut-paper exercises on it. It is why one chip looks different on gray paper and on white, and why a wall color can change when the sofa changes. | Physical principle |
| Split-complementary | A hue together with the two hues on either side of its complement. On the painter's (RYB) wheel the course uses, blue with yellow-orange and red-orange is one example. Like every wheel relationship, it is a starting point for a palette, not a test a palette has to pass, and a screen (RGB) wheel would give different neighbors. | Convention |
| Surround | Whatever sits around a color: the paper under a chip, the floor beside a wall, the gray background of this site's demonstrations. Because of simultaneous contrast, the surround is part of the color you see. The course's fixed gray "studio" surround exists so that every on-screen comparison is made against the same neutral. | Term |
| Swatch | A small piece of a color used for comparison: a chip, a scrap of fabric, a carpet square, a tile, or a colored rectangle on a screen. A physical swatch is real material; a screen swatch is approximate and labelled so on every page here. Screen swatches are for comparing, not deciding; a physical swatch seen in the room is part of the test. | Term |
| Technical data sheet | A manufacturer's document for a specific product: what it is for, which surfaces, which primer, coverage, drying time, sheen. It, and the can, govern anything the course says about products. When a page here reports a maker's statement, the data sheet is where to confirm it today. | Product-specific |
| Temperature | One word with two different uses, which the course keeps apart. The color temperature of light is a measured number in kelvin on a bulb box (lower is warmer, higher is bluer). The temperature of a color is a comparison between two colors (this beige is warmer than that one). A warm bulb can shift how a cool-leaning wall looks, but the two scales do not convert into each other. | Term |
| Texture | The surface of a material: nap on a rug, weave on a sofa, grain on wood, plaster on a wall. Texture casts tiny shadows and scatters light, which can make a color read darker and often deeper than the same color on a smooth surface, and makes it change more with the angle of the light. This is one reason a fabric swatch and a paint chip of "the same" color often do not look the same. | Physical principle |
| Threshold | The place where one room's colors meet the next: a doorway, the edge of an open plan, the top of the stairs. Thresholds are where repetition and variation are decided, and where a clear value step can help people see the edge of a floor change; check it in place with whoever needs it. Module 7 covers them. | Term |
| Tint | A hue with white added: lighter, and usually a little more muted. Pale pinks, pale blues and most pastels are tints. Paint store staff also use "tint" as a verb for adding colorant to a base; that is a different use. | Term |
| Tone | A hue with gray added: muted at about the same lightness. Most colors that sit comfortably on large surfaces at home are tones. In everyday speech "tone" is also used loosely for any variant of a color; here it means the grayer direction. | Term |
| Triadic | Three hues evenly spaced around the wheel. On the painter's (RYB) wheel the course uses, red, yellow and blue form one triad, and orange, green and violet another; a screen (RGB) wheel gives different triads. In a home a triad is usually muted or used in very different amounts, by convention; it is a starting point, not a rule. | Convention |
| Trim | The woodwork around a room: baseboards, door and window casings, crown molding, sometimes doors themselves. Trim is often painted one color throughout a home, often in a higher sheen than walls, and it is the nearest neighbor of most wall colors, so a wall is usually seen beside it. "Trim one step lighter than the wall" is a convention, not a rule. | Term |
| Tunable white | An LED product whose color temperature can be adjusted, usually from a warm setting to a cool one, by a switch or an app. The U.S. Department of Energy's page on color-tunable products describes the types. Useful for a room used at very different hours; the wall can look different at each setting, so sample at the settings you will use. | Product-specific |
| Undertone | A word with two meanings. In paint making, it is the color a paint shows when spread very thinly over white, as opposed to its masstone (Golden Artist Colors' Color Mixing Guide). In everyday decorating talk, and in this course, it is the faint hue a neutral leans toward, seen by comparison: a beige looks pink next to a yellow beige and yellow next to a pink one. Used this second way, an undertone is not a hidden property to be unmasked; it is a direction relative to a particular neighbor, usually your floor or trim. Benjamin Moore's own page says undertones are easiest to judge side by side. Undertones do not all have to match; they have to be chosen on purpose. | Term |
| Unresolved (workbook status) | The status for a question you have not been able to settle and are not pretending to: which way the carpet leans, whether the ceiling stays white, what the hallway bulb will be. Writing "unresolved" with a note on what would resolve it is a complete answer in this course, and the final review in Module 11 goes through every one. | Term |
| Value | How light or dark a color is, from white through grays to black, regardless of hue. The pattern of light and dark does much of the work in a room: it shapes whether a room feels calm or busy and defines edges. Value differences often stay visible in dim light, at a distance and for many people with color vision differences, but not for everyone: the National Eye Institute notes that some types also make certain colors look less bright, and low vision varies. For fine detail and edges, the eye generally picks out light-dark differences more easily than hue differences. | Term |
| Variation | Letting something change from room to room, or surface to surface, inside a plan that otherwise repeats: a different wall value in the bedroom, a different accent in the study. Variation is what keeps a connected home from feeling like one long corridor; repetition is what keeps variation from feeling like five unrelated houses. | Convention |
| Warm | Leaning toward yellow, orange or red, relative to something else. "Warmer than" is a comparison you can make reliably between two chips; "warm" on its own is a label, and the feelings people attach to it (cozy, welcoming, dated) vary by person and culture. A warm color can be dark or light; warmth is not value. | Preference |
| Warm-dim | An LED product that shifts to a warmer color temperature as it is dimmed, imitating the way an incandescent bulb goes orange at low levels. The U.S. Department of Energy's page on color-tunable products describes it. It matters for an evening room like Wren Lane's, where the color of the walls at the dimmed setting is the one that matters most. | Product-specific |
| White balance | A camera's version of adaptation: the phone guesses what in the scene should be white and shifts every other color to make it so. Two photos of the same wall at two hours will disagree, and both may disagree with your eyes. This is why photographs are useful for checking value relationships and for remembering, not for judging a color. | Term |
Several of these words are taught properly inside the modules; the glossary is for remembering, not learning. Hue, value, chroma and warmth are Module 2; surround and undertone are Module 3; everything about light is Module 4; the palette roles are Module 6; sheens and samples are Modules 8 and 9. The source library lists the manufacturer and government pages the product and light entries report from, with the date each was read.
Limits
Meanings here are the course's working usage for choosing color at home. Where an entry reports what a manufacturer says about its own product (sample sizes, sheens, where an LRV is printed), it reports that maker's public page as read on the date in the source library; products change, and the can and the technical data sheet govern. No entry tells you how a color will look in your room; that is what the sampling in Module 9 is for.