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Paint Lighting Kitchens

Lighting and Paint Color Concerns

5 years ago

Good Evening. I recently painted my kitchen walls with PPG Swirling Smoke paint. During the day it looks great but at night with light on, looks horrible. Website says Swirling Smoke is a light, gray, modern greige with a mahogany undertone from Oranges family. My cabinets are white.

I have no idea what lighting to use. Right now I have Great Value model A21011 5000k 14W and it just looks depressing, shadowy. Very hard to explain. Im only using these lights because I had them around the house.

Please help. Which bulbs do I need for a dimmable ceiling fan with 3 light fixtures? Sorry, I know I probably sound like an idiot.

Thank you in advance for your help!

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Comments (4)

PRO
Build Beautiful
5 years ago
Hello candycandy13 ,

Most people (myself included) didn't spend their college years in lighting design, so don't feel bad. Luckily, a lot of people (myself included) paid a lot of money for lighting design over the years, so let's see if we can get you where you need to go.

It sounds like the 14W is your problem, though the 5000k temp sounds spot on. Without pictures, it's hard to nail exactly what you need, but the image attachment should help you out. If it looks, 'depressing,' it's either too yellow or too stark like a hospital.

Hope this diagram helps!

Thanks,

-frank
candycandy13 thanked Build Beautiful
Michelle misses Sophie
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
Color temperature is just one piece. Very important and too often overlooked is CRI (color rendering index). Especially in cheap bulbs (like Great Value), the CRI might be as low as 80 or lower. Look for bulbs with 90+ CRI (most brands will list this proudly on the spec label). The higher the CRI, the more "true" such as what you might see during the day, the color will appear.
candycandy13 thanked Michelle misses Sophie
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PRO
Lori A. Sawaya
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
What Michelle said. CRI is everything when it comes to color - think of it as a performance ranking for lamps (light bulbs)

I recommend CREE on my website:

Website says Swirling Smoke is a light, gray, modern greige with a mahogany undertone from Oranges family.

Architectural paint coatings/colors do not have undertones despite what you read on blogs and forums. The most egregious issue with categorizing color by subjectively assigned undertones is no one specifies the quality of light they're using to make that judgment and assign that category to a color.

The "mahogany undertone" business just underscores how far into utterly ridiculous the entire misinformed concept of undertones has devolved to.

Swirling Smoke belongs to the yellow hue family --- under a reasonably balanced quality of light.
candycandy13 thanked Lori A. Sawaya
candycandy13
Original Author
5 years ago
Thank you all so very much!!!

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