Sunday, February 25, 2007
Colors for Historic Preservation
Benjamin Moore's paint chips scanned in above celebrate their historic preservation series, dozens of mixes designed to replicate specific paints from historic buildings -- kittery point green, van alen green, sherwood green, yorktowne green, tarrytown green, and lafayette green all harken back. Scanning in CMYK- based process colors allow them to be represented on an RGB computer monitor (though perhaps not with the same hue, saturation, and value). RGB files, however, can not be used to print process colors (Design Basics Index, p. 213)
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4 comments:
that's a great color palette. and a red that would go much better on my green site than the coke red I've got up there now.
well, I can assure you that the translation to the web dramatically muted the colors, the CMYK colors on the paint chip were far better! Glad you liked the palette
I covered two small Maryland towns famous for their historical preservation efforts. The problems came in the form of the stringent regulations the town officials imposed on property owners with regards to building upkeep and new construction.
One strict rule governed the paint colors the owners could use---which were mostly suede, maple and downing earth.
Our current notions of historic colors are only partially accurate. For the most part, paint was not just decoration, but it was the primary way of protecting your structures. The average person used commonly occurring substances (dirt) mixed with a binder (milk). Burnt Sienna is the color of the dirt outside Sienna, when it's burned. Guess what Raw Sienna is!
See my blog for more information on what the rich did for paint in historic times: :: http://jomc712.blogspot.com/2007/03/historic-colors.html ::
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