Silver Peony vs Starry Night

Which should you choose?

Starry Night is the lighter of the two by 0.50 LRV points. In a north-facing or low-light room that gap is the difference you will actually notice. Starry Night is the warmer one, so it sits better with wood and brass; the other stays cleaner next to cool whites and steel.

What the LRV gap actually means

The gap between these two is 0.50 LRV points. Below about five points the difference is rarely visible on a single wall on its own — what does change is how the colour reads next to ceiling white and in late afternoon light. If you are choosing between these two, undertone will decide it more than lightness.

Which to choose by room orientation

North-facing, where light is indirect and cool all day, both will read darker and cooler than the chip suggests. Starry Night is the safer pick here — it is the lighter of the two by 0.50 points, and a north room almost always wants more LRV than you first think.

South-facing, with direct warm light for most of the day, both work and there is room for the deeper one. Silver Peony will not close the room in at this orientation, and it avoids the glare a high LRV can produce around midday.

East and west, where the light changes temperature through the day, undertone decides it. Starry Night is the warmer of the two, so it will be exaggerated by west-facing afternoon sun and will flatten in an east room after lunch.

Before you decide

An LRV gap under about five points is rarely visible on a wall on its own, but it does change how the colour reads next to ceiling white and in late afternoon light. Paint a large sample of each and look at both at three different times of day before you buy the paint.

The undertone difference, in practice

Silver Peony measures chroma 0.0104 at hue angle 325.7°, and Starry Night measures 0.0082 at 286.2°. Those two numbers are what separates these colours once lightness is close.

Chroma says how much colour is actually present. Below 0.012 the eye reads it as genuinely neutral; between 0.012 and 0.035 the undertone is real but subtle, and shows mostly by comparison or in difficult light. One of these two sits in the effectively-neutral range, so it will shift less with the light than its alternative.

Hue angle says which way it shifts. A difference of 39.50° between these two looks small written down, but at low chroma it is exactly the kind of difference that makes one grey read purple beside another that reads green.

How people get this choice wrong

• Comparing the chips side by side in the shop. Shop lighting is bright and neutral and resembles no house. Two colours that look distinct there can look identical in your hallway, and the reverse.
• Choosing by name. Colour names are marketing; LRV and undertone are measurements. These two are separated by 0.50 LRV points, not by what they are called.
• Testing one coat. The first coat is rarely the finished colour, especially over a different colour, and judging from it leads people to pick the wrong one of the two.
• Painting the sample next to existing skirting or trim. That white shifts what you see, in the same way the dark surround shifts the swatch on this site's colour pages.

How to test them properly

Paint a sample of each at least two feet square, in two coats, and let them dry completely — wet paint reads darker and is not the finished colour. Put them side by side on the same wall rather than on different walls, because each wall takes different light and that only adds a variable.

Look at them at three points in the day: morning, mid-afternoon, and at night under whatever artificial light you actually use. Artificial light is the one that surprises people most, especially warm bulbs, which push any undertone toward yellow.

Do not judge them against your current wall colour. An existing colour shifts your perception of the one you are assessing — the same simultaneous-contrast effect the surround toggle demonstrates on every colour page. If you can, paint the samples onto white card and move them around the room.

• View colour: Silver Peony SW 6547
• View colour: Starry Night SW 6540
• Grays