Paint Color Lab How We Measure Paint Colors
Paint Color Lab lists facts that each brand publishes about its colors, plus calculations we make from them. We check every color by hand on the brand’s own website and show the date we checked it.
What comes from the brand
- LRV (light reflectance value): as published on the brand’s color page. 0 is black, 100 is a perfect white.
- Sherwin-Williams, Behr, Valspar and PPG RGB and hex: as published on the color’s page (PPG publishes RGB only; we convert it to hex).
- Benjamin Moore RGB: Benjamin Moore publishes LRV but not RGB in text, so we read the RGB of the on-screen swatch on its color page. Each page says which source applies.
What we calculate
- CIE Lab: converted from the hex value (sRGB, D65 white point) with the open-source colour-science library.
- Undertone: from the hue angle and chroma of the Lab value. Below a chroma of 2 we call a color neutral.
- Closest matches: ranked by CIEDE2000 color difference (ΔE 2000) against every color in our database from each other brand. Each color page lists the two closest colors from every other brand.
Limits
Screens, printers and walls all render color differently. A hex value describes how a color looks on a calibrated screen, not how it looks in your room. Matches only cover the colors in our database so far. Always test a physical sample.
We are not affiliated with Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore, Behr, Valspar, PPG or any other brand. Brand and color names are trademarks of their owners and appear here only to identify colors.