The CIE sets the standards for measuring color. They recommend several ways to measure the wavelengths of light reflected off a color to define a color. There are several standards that are used to measure color, but the LCH values are the easiest way to describe color in a way that is easily visualized. LRV is the Y measurement when using the CIE XYZ standard that measured Pure White will have an CIE LCH value of 100 / 0 / NA under 6504k light L stands for Light - it is directly related to LRV. So the closer to 100 a color is the lighter that color is. C stands for Chroma - the closer to zero the closer to true black, gray or white a color is H stand for Hue. True black, white and gray have no hue as they are the drop dead center of the color spectrum having equal amounts of all color wavelengths. Snowfall is technically lighter than Chantilly Lace, (LRV of 91.6 vs LRV of 91.4 per Benjamin Moore measurements), (Super White has an LRV of 89.5 and Simply White has an LRV of 92.6 per BM) but it also has a higher chroma than Chantilly Lace (4.168 vs 2.538 per easyRGB website) That makes it less white than Chantilly Lace. (Super White has a Chroma of 1.224 and Simply white has a chroma of 4.657 per easyRGB) This is why Benjamin Moore states that their two whitest whites are Chantilly Lace and Super White. Why would Simply White seem like a brighter white It has a higher LRV than any of the other whites and it is more yellow than the other whites. Look at how we see yellow compared to blue or green or gray. So adding just a bit of yellow vs adding a bit of orange or green to the mix may appear cleaner/brighter. Try to remember that we can measure the light waves reflected off of a color to define that color, but the human brain is a highly complex organ (processes 11 million bits of information per second) and we have just begun to scratch the surface of understanding how humans actually perceive color. We don't even know if two people 'see' the same color when we see a red fire engine. We both call the color we see in our brain Red because we have been taught that Red is the name of the color when our eyes receive a specific combination of light waves that we have defined as Red. We do know that women can identify smaller differences in color than men can see. We know that being depressed lowers your ability to see color. We know that we learn color and that Children who are exposed to more color are better at discerning shades of color. Probably the most fascinating thing that I have learned about color is that when pregnant rats were isolated in single color atmospheres that the babies were behaviorally different based on the color the mother was exposed to throughout their lives regardless of what color atmosphere they were placed in. My favorite white is no longer being made, but is color matched well by Benjamin Moore. It is whiter and cleaner than any of the BM whites (Base white with a good dollop of Titanium White added and a small amount of Yellow Oxide added) Devine Icing - CIE-L*Ch(ab) = 96.569 5.785 95.373° Simply White - CIE-L*Ch(ab) = 95.648 4.657 106.615° Chantilly Lace - CIE-L*Ch(ab) = 95.164 2.538 114.465°

The concept of warm and cool colors predates most of the scientific tools we have today to measure color. It originated from the concept of warmth vs cold. the Oxford English Dictionary describes 18th century usage to include: Cold - applied to tints or colouring which suggest a cold sunless day, or the colder effect of evening; esp. to blue and grey, and tints akin to these. Warm - suggestive of warmth, said especially of red or yellow ... to become 'warmer' or more ruddy: "On a bright morning of July, when the grey of the sky was just beginning to warm with the rising day". I always conceptualized the concept as warm-related to the heat of the sun or cool of the water. The scientific difference deals with the sensitivity of the S cone. I am not a neuro science expert, but it has something to do with thresholds of the S cone and how colors change as they are desaturated. Blue goes from blue to darker and darker blue, but we still perceive the color as blue and we name the colors as blue light blue, sky blue, navy blue. When we change the chroma Blue goes from bright blue to gray blue. You can't do the same with yellow. We only see yellow in very specific ranges of light and chroma. We call dark yellow gold or brown and as we desaturate yellow it can either move toward green or violet. At the lowest saturations there isn't any yellow or orange or red. Have you ever heard someone describe a gray as a dark yellow gray? Nope. Beige can be pink, yellow, gold or green and gray can be green gray, blue gray or violet gray. So when the hue is yellow and it is desaturated it becomes olive green or brown - moves toward red or toward green it never stays yellow. At some point it moves to either a green gray or violet gray and looses any association with yellow. Grays are innately cool. - related to water, not the sun. Do you ever picture the sun as gray? Do you ever picture water as yellow? Where is the break between cool and warm? At what level of chroma do we determine that a yellow is no longer warm, but has moved into the cool zone? That may actually depend on your physiology - some people see more colors than other and can discern subtle changes in color better than others. It may also depend on the levels of dopamine in your system - we see colors more vividly when dopamine levels are high than we do when dopamine levels are low. I don't know if their is a definitive answer to your question about Chantilly Lace. Is it above or below the S cone threshold? It seems that the color experts at Benjamin Moore agree with many other color experts and define it as a cool white so my guess is that it is beyond the threshold of chroma where we actually perceive the color as warm even if it is in a CIE LCH hue that is generally associated with the Munsell Yellow Green hue family. BTW - CIE LCH Is linear in nature, where Munsell is not. The Muncell hues curve when mapped against LCH hues. The curvature expands as chroma and luminance are reduced. How we see color and how we measure color are not perfectly correlated.

Since Classic Gray on its own has a LRV of 74.78, does 75% Classic Gray have a higher LRV? (And even higher for 50%, 25%, etc.?) Not necessarily. There's a lot to unpack. Whenever you change a formula, you're not "tweaking" the original color. You're creating a new color. It's feasible the new cut color will end up darker. Color has 3 dimensions (hue, value, chroma) and you don't know how similar the new color will be until it's mixed, dried, measured and compared to the original target color. The second issue is 75%, 50%, 25% of what --- exactly. Paint color formulas are the result of precise proportions of colorants to a can of base paint. Which is why there is no such thing as "tweaking" a formula and why when the formula changes the result is a new - unmeasured - color that may or may not have similar attributes to the original target color. Our painters have said that we won't be able to tell a difference with 50% Classic Gray and that we should sample 25% Classic Gray instead. Is this true? Maybe. They may have seen the colors and know first-hand. Our trim is Chantilly Lace (very white with slightly warm undertones, LRV 92.2). Paint colors don't *have* undertones. Undertones are just someone's subjective opinion of what a color looks like - to them - under unspecified light sources in a particular context. Undertones are not a fact. For example, you think Chantilly Lace has a slightly "warm undertone". Many would disagree. But that's what it actually looks like you. In your space. In context of your house and lighting. Should we consider mixing Chantilly Lace with Classic Grey to achieve what we're looking for It can take A LOT of white paint to change a color. Entirely feasible to end up with 5 gallons of paint that you still don't think is light enough and you could keep adding white and end up with 5 more gallons that looks exactly the same as it did after the first 5 gallons of white. Again, no way to predict the results. Just have to do it and see what you get. Custom, unmeasured colors can be an expensive rabbit hole to go down.

@Dawne, you don't bother me. Ask as many questions as You need. Most are 6" ( upper cabinets and some smaller drawers ) and 8" on longer drawers.