I think the question is so general.

Can you show the art and some ideas of colors you are leaning toward?

No, it is not a general question - it is very specific. When creating art it's best to be in a place where colors are not reflecting from off the walls and distorting your choice of colors you apply to your art....lighting of course plays into it too. Its a different consideration than designing a room around a specific existing piece of art. Hmmm could be I need to find an artist forum!

I found a beautiful warm white, BM Crisp Linen. I don't know how it looks in a larger space with more natural light (the swatch looks quite white) but it sure is pretty! It's full spectrum so you might find it more interesting. It is not a bright white in my room. There's yellow and a touch of red in it.

Did the old masters worry about this? Unless you pick something strong and saturated, like a pea green or hot pink, I'm not sure it will have that much impact. Wherever your artwork lives later, there will be colors bouncing all around. I think creating art in a natural environment, rather than something sterile, does make sense.

This post was edited by snookums2 on Tue, Apr 23, 13 at 14:46

I have a sewing/craft room combined with my work-from-home office. The room is 19 feet long and has 5 windows. I painted it BM 'Honeymoon' from their Aura line, as it went beautifully with the loveseat and window treatments in here. I also occasionally paint in here and the wall color hasn't been an issue at all.

I'm not clear on what a "photo scanning & restoration project" entails. Certainly for writing, any color that works for you should be just fine. If you're an artist that's mixing or selecting colors, lighting and colors reflected off walls might impact your ability to mix or select colors that work in other light. I suspect that stronger colors (such as snookums2's pea green and hot pink anti-suggestion) would be more likely to reflect and impact the overall lighting in the room. So a softer color would be less risky in that way. But I see no reason you couldn't go with a soft color on the walls rather than stark white.

How about a pale gray or tan/taupe? I just painted my LR with BM London Fog and love it. BM Revere Pewter is also nice...kind of a greige.

Snookums, what do you mean when you say it is "full spectrum" - I thought that was an exclusive thing that some designers have created (as opposed to the paint manufacturers colors)?. Anyway the Linen White looks very appealing and assuming my monitor is not distorting it too much (a big "if") I might continue it as ceiling color throughout the entire apartment. A soft greige sounds good too like it would look good with the wood floors/trim- the place does have fir floors and trim throughout the apartments (brown/red/gold) which is a color too. So maybe I need to just chill out about it - as long as its light/neutralish should be OK.

In my craft room, I wanted a neutral color that wouldn't clash with anything I was working on, but stark white would've been too cold for me. So I went with BM Adobe Beige on the walls which blended nicely with the counter tops.

There are a few paint companies that offer full spectrum. BM now has a line called Color Stories. They don't use black or gray, which can deaden colors. There are a minimum of five pigments in the paint, usually more. It reflects a broader range of the light spectrum that way. I do see a significant difference in the one I've tried. The color is even alive in the shadows.

It's Crisp Linen (not Linen White, if you were looking for the one I mentioned).

I think the task light you use will make the most difference.