I love Quietude in my family room. In different lighting I rarely see much change in the color.
In my kitchen which has cream cabs with saddle glaze and saddle island, granite is blacks, browns, salmon and a tinge of blue I went with a brown wall color. I do not have much wall space in my kitchen, but I'm happy with the brown walls and seeing the Quietude in my FR.

Starting with the general: what color paint will work ? Can another color or tint be added to Constellation be so that it will read a truer blue?

This is why you need samples and to look at the samples with the ligh sources you plan to use. All surfaces change color depending on the light source: that's what happens with reflected light. It's only blue because the light hitting it has some blue wavelengths.

Start by bringing in all the pale blue chips you can find and tape them to the wall ... observe them over a period of several days, removing any chip that loses color with changes in light.

You may need to bring in some of the "sunlight" or "bright white" or "cool white" bulbs into the kitchen to make the color what you want. If the rest of the colors go too garish, you will need to change the color scheme.

Thanks, lazygardens,
I had the same thought.I could leave the cool white in small hallway adjacent to kitchen. "Nice blue" would register when coming in.
Under the cabs, I'm thinking of going bs-less....The house is 150 year old not-elegant farmhouse. If I painted I could cool white leds on dimmers.
I think it might look odd to have the ceiling lights vary. This is not a huge kitchen and all the ceiliing lights are visible from any doorway. There's a small "expanse "of wall (8 x9 maybe) on the only non-cabinent side. I put put could up a cool white down light to "wash the wall" ; there will be some attractive pictures there; they'd also benefit from cool lighting.

There aren't any "other" colors. gray,white counter, white cabs, wood floor. There's also very little wall: the backspash area is only about 10 inches, the door frames, moulding, all of which are simple and modest proportions to go with age and style of home.

OTOH, as I said, the blue doesn't read well in daytime either. So perhaps I just need to do it right and change the paint. In the scheme of delays and mistakes it is one of cheapest and easiest to fix.

Of course I'll take you advice (and my own counsel which I did not listen to) and be more thorough in vetting.the color.

This post was edited by idabean on Sun, Oct 27, 13 at 18:56

Had I read your post... oh had I read your post. We recently had a two story entry way and upper hallway and also the ceiling of our open kitchen/livingroom painted with BM Constellation. I HATE IT! I mean hate it... well only like it in perfect lighting which only exists in one spot for one part of the day. One wall looks grey, one baby blue, one periwinkle... What to do b/c I hate it. The entry way is huge and open and well.. mult walls are painted this color. Also in the kitchen/lr... it doesn't even look blue... it looks dirty white. BLAH>>>>>>>

I'm going to post a mini-graphic of the Benjamin Moore Affinity blue-greens and blues. The colors are in order of overtones around the color wheel. Chroma is the last number in the notation. For example here is Constellation's color notation, 1.84 B / 8.63 / 0.86.

Constellation doesn't have enough chroma to work with a north quality of light. Not enough chroma means not saturated enough, not colorful or strong enough. It's too weak. If you want a blue for a north facing room it has to be a clean-ish blue (not too muddied) and have some oomph and strength to bust thru the dim quality of light.

Considering the overall quality of light you have to work with in the space, I would not be looking at anything pale.

Instead try colors with similar characteristics, lightness/darkness and colorfulness as something like AF-500 Atmospheric.

Many think with a dim quality of light you're limited to warm colors or need to stay away from anything that qualifies as "white".

That's not correct.

You can use any hue including white in a dim room as long as the color has an edge of crispness, not too muddied, and has a generous degree of colorfulness. If you do samples in the space, you'll see it and understand immediately what colors will pale off into the light and the ones that will stand up to it.

Link to color notations for all the Benjamin Moore Affinity Colors

Since your room has only a north-facing window and artificial light, if you want to see and felt he blue, you need to go much deeper than BM's Constellation Blue. It's the low light that is making it look blah.

Get a sample of maybe BM Gossamer Blue and paint at least one full wall with the sample and see if that works better.

Even better for a north-facing room, low light:

BM Lake Victoria, a warmer, less gray blue. Kind of a saturated SW Sea Salt, which is a really nice color.

Bm glass slipper. A shimmery blue silver

I love BM Constellation! Ceilings in Master bedroom and Laundryroom with much different lighting conditions, it all looks subtle and like a soft sky blue. Using it next in vacation home ceilings in the bedrooms in the mountains.