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I have recently installed LIFX colored light bulbs in my room. However, my wall is currently painted a fairly saturated blue, against which some of the bulb colors strike me at least initially as unpleasant. For unrelated reasons, my room will be painted soon, but the new bulb acquisition will surely influence my paint color decision.

Presumably a very neutral, unsaturated, light paint color would look best with the widest range of bulb color settings. Do colored bulb owners typically opt for straight, untinted white wall paint, or would some sort of neutral off white/khaki/gray/etc. work as well? What range of paint colors would be commonly considered viable for such a room?

Joachim
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user1638
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    I'm not certain but I'd bet that anything on the pure white-grey-black spectrum would work. – Catija Feb 21 '17 at 22:57
  • This seems like an interesting question but I believe the close voters are correct. This really isn't a good fit for us. I wonder if it would work on [diy.se] maybe? – Catija Feb 22 '17 at 20:18
  • OK, so not DIY... we're working on finding a home for it, though. :D – Catija Feb 22 '17 at 20:46

2 Answers2

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Disclaimer, I don't own such a bulb. This is straight color theory and design.

LED bulbs such as your smart bulb use additive color. They operate by combining Red/Green/Blue light at varying intensities to create the 16 million combinations given in the specs.

Your wall paint works with subtractive color or pigments. They work by absorbing some R/G/B light and reflecting the rest. So your blue wall actually absorbs mostly red and green, reflecting blue back to your eye.

This means that when your LED is adding colors that more heavily rely on red and green (yellows and oranges), they won't look as appealing on your blue wall. This is because little if any blue is emitted, so little if any blue is reflected. On top of this, the wall still reflects some red and green as usual, and mixing it altogether leads to unattractive browns and greys. You can test this by changing your bulb to pure green and shining it on a red object, such as an apple, with no other light. The apple will likely look unattractive and greyish.

Change your wall to any other color, and the same thing will happen, except you've just adjusted which portion of the color wheel is affected. Darker walls will be more adversely affected because dark walls, by nature, already reflect less or absorb more of the light coming at them.

So, if your goal is to have your walls look pleasant under any of the 16 million color possibilities, assuming they're all pleasant, then lighter neutral shades or white are your best bet. This is because they will reflect back the most even light. The goal is to not have the pigment of the wall muddy the color by unevenly absorbing and reflecting the light shone on it.

However, 16 million colors is quite a color palette to try and coordinate a room around, and walls are not the only points of color. Furniture, decor and other accents may also play a factor in your decision. If you'd like to use a certain color palette in your decorating, then you may want to consider limiting your use of the LED's spectrum.

If that's the case, you could venture into some wall colors that take advantage of the spectrum you do use. For instance, if you decide to eliminate yellow from the LIFX, then there's a wider variety of blue wall hues that'd look pleasant under the remaining lights.

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White is the best option for colored bulbs. Anything else would be more limiting. I have a video about this subject, but I have recieved complaints on this site for posting links to my videos, so...

Anyway CreationEdge is absolutley correct about the difference of additive vs subtractive rules of color theory. However, they have neglected the question of human perception of color.

Humans decern "3 primary colors" because we perceive color variation through cone cells in our eyeballs. We have three different types of cone cells, each type is receptive to a very specific range of light waves. When light waves are presented to our eyes that stimulate different types of cone cells, we see compound colors.

When it comes to the issue of "how colors make us feel," and why are some colors brighter than others (e.g. Lime green vs violet), things get much more interesting. This is due to the fact that between the 3 different types of cone cells in our eyes (short, medium, and long), we do not have an even distribution of cone cells. Therefore, cone cells that are in great abundance, will be sending much more signal to the brain when stimulated, than cone cells which are fewer in number (like the ones receptive to "blue").

And then there's the issue of cellular stimulation fatige. So for example, when you stare at "red", you see it very quickly and brightly, it stands out (which is why we use that color for alerts), because the cone cell type responsible for perception of this wave lenghth of ligh is in great abundance. But these cells get quicky fatigued, and eventually the "red" object begins to appear "green".

Getting back to your original question, concerning colored light reflecting off a colored object, there is no greater resource than Leonardo Da Vinci "On Painting." He discuses in great detail, the subject of reflected light. I also recommend Joseph Albers' book (the title of which escapes me at the moment) and Goeth "Optics".

I hope that helps.

Vasqi
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