Interior Paint changes colors in areas during the daytime?!

[g.cook.a]

Hello,

I've been trying to finish up a paint job in our bedroom using a darker-green American Tradition paint we got at Lowe's. I've put on a total of three coats now, and it seems like whenever sunlight comes in through our windows (even if on the otherside of the house; not direct sunlight) certain areas of the walls become lighter. This is VERY noticable. Is this a common thing? How can I fix it? I can't just paint over it because the middle area of the repaint will then be okay, but the surrounding area of that repaint will then become lighter during the day. Looks fine at night with all the lights on. What's the deal?

Thanks!

Garrett

[BillGill]

What kind of lighting do you use in the room? If you are using compact flourescents (CFLs) that may be the problem. They can cause a color change because they don't have a continuous spectrum, and your paint may have a tint that they don't pick up.

I remember when I painted my bath room yellow, but when I tried CFLs in there it turned green. I went back to incandescents.

Bill Gill

[avid_hiker]

Would you be using gloss paint? Gloss paint will reflect more white light. Where if non-gloss the white light would be absorbed more.

You have to study the color spectrum and how our eyes see colors to understand why green is green, etc. Sunlight is all colors, blue, green, red, etc. For the color green, every color is absorbed except the green which is reflected back at your eye.....then you see green. If lighter during the day, this means more white is being reflected together with the green.

Like the person above stated that bulbs, lamps, do not put out a true color spectrum as sunlight......so the colors look different to our eye at nighttime. Hope you kinda understand this........but wishing you the best in solving your particular problem.

Dean

[Jennifer]

It's just how paint behaves, as far as I can tell. I've seen it with different brands and colors, though some colors don't seem to be affected as much. For me, it has nothing to do with using CFLs... the color change comes when it goes from diffuse ambient light to sunlight streaming through the room. My hallway goes from soft butter yellow to lemon yellow (blech) and my office goes from pale slate green to a strange candy-colored greenish-blue. After the first few weeks of it bothering me, I pretty much stopped noticing it :)

So that's my vote... ignore it, and eventually it will stop bothering you. Or keep experimenting and find a color that at least changes to another color you like when the light hits it. FWIW, Benjamin Moore Stone House, Nantucket Fog, and Palladian Blue don't seem to do much, if any, color changing in any light. I used three colors of American Traditions paint in my old house, too, and none of those did a noticeable color change, but I no longer remember the names of the shades.

Good luck!

-- Jennifer

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Light is measure in degrees Kelvin. The temperature of the sunlight changes as the day goes on. That will affect how you see things in the various lights. Once the sun is gone, the house lighting is constant so it will look the same on the walls. You can read more here

Simple test. Jut look at something outside, preferably a solid white. Look at it at various times of the day and see how it changes to the eye. Better yet, photograph it with no flash and compare the photos.

[dadiOH]

Close but no cigar...something of a given color, regardless of gloss, isn't reflecting *any* white because - as you stated - the other colors necessary for white light are being absorbed by the colored surface.

If, as you suggest, the surface were glossy the OP *might* be seeing a specular reflection (a reflection of the light source itself) which would be whatever color the source was. Such a reflection is the same regardless of the color of the underlying surface and depends both on the "reflectability" of the surface and the angle at which light strikes it relative to the viewer.

[George E. Cawthon]

Simple answer is yes. The change from darker to lighter and vice versa is very notice in light colors. My ceilings which when viewed with a light at floor level are an even white, have all sorts of shadows and changes from light to dark with natural lighting. The color (white naturally) even changes a lot as light is reflected from the walls which are various shades of light yellow/cream. (Makes the ceiling and walls damn hard to paint unless you use artificial light.)

As the sunlight changes over the course of the day, all colors (light and dark) will change somewhat in intensity and many paints will change color dramatically. We had a cream/yellow house that near sundown had a very ugly greenish tint. A different paint solved that problem. Maintain the color in various lights is a paint problem, some do better than other. Maintain and intensity (light to dark) is a light problem and no paint (brand) will eliminate the changes.

You just don't have a problem.

[George E. Cawthon]

Absolutely dead on! Anyone that doesn't pay much attention to light and color changes (most of us) and then is forced to look carefully (painting) immediately becomes aware of things they never saw before. And, they start looking for problems. Careful observation in other homes will show that most changes are natural and should be expected.

[NickySantoro]

The deal is that paint looks different depending upon the angle at which the light hits it. It's also possible that, as often happens with very dark colors when no tinted primer is applied first, you need another coat or two.

[g.cook.a]

I'm thinking of taking back the paint and getting another brand in the same color. It's just so weird that it all looks homogenous in artificial light, but when the sun comes out only splotches of the wall doesn't match anymore (i.e. some colors look a lot how they used to, and other areas sometimes right in the middle of the wall look a lot lighter). The color is a darker green, and in some cases, painting another coat in an area makes the border of that area lighter than it used to be! The gloss is only flat enamel. I used two coats, do I need another?

Thanks!

Garrett

[carolrcohen]

I congratulate you on having sensitive color vision; not everybody does. But putting on another coat of paint may not do it - some pigments are more transparent than others and one will always be able to somewhat see "into" the layers of that paint. I notice this most in yellows (which can include some greens). You may have to choose another color.

CC

[NickySantoro]

I'd give it one more coat, including the cut ins, and see where you are then.