Choosing Colours - the book

The prime role of CHOOSING COLOURS the book is not to provide a colour matching service. It is intended as a book of palettes to show how colours can work together: in paint yes, but also in fabric, wallpaper and furniture

A note on the print quality of CHOOSING COLOURS

The colour list was matched to actual printed sheets from the book run rather than to proofs - which are produced in a slightly way.  It is not widely known, but colour reproduction in books is notoriously inaccurate and will vary quite significantly even across a print run. Consequently we colour matched to sheets 'pulled' from the beginning, middle and end of the print run. Even then we cannot be sure that every book matches the paint list exactly.

However, the book itself is printed in Hexachrome, a six-colour and rather expensive process, to ensure that a wider gamut of colour reproduction was possible. This means we were able to print bright greens, oranges and purples which are not normally well rendered in four-colour process printing.  Nevertheless, this does not mean that the overall fidelity of the swatches in the book, either to the sources or to the paint matches, is any more consistent across the print run.

A note on the limitations of paint pigments

Of all the colourants available today, those that colour paint are the most limited.  It is almost impossible to find an intense bright red, or orange-red, or purple, or magenta, or blue-purple because safe, permanent colourants don't exist for the domestic market.  For that reason, Fiesta Orange (a US colour) was the nearest colour reference we could find for two swatches in palette 3.  Equally, Sherwin Purple (also in the US) is the nearest reference for two colours in palettes 7 & 8.   This limitation in paints is hard to believe, but the international NCS system which prescribes paint colours is itself limited because of the optical limitations of these colourants.

The Choosing Colours book is readily available at W H Smiths and other leading booksellers and you can buy it on-line from us, click here, or alternatively from Amazon. To choose and buy paint - click buy paint.

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