You have to consider it all over the place!

Basically an undertone is what makes colors either look "off" or look good. It's because colors are not absolute. They are context sensitive, and how you perceive them varies depending on what is near them. That beige will look pinker or greyer or greener or yellower if you change its surroundings, because you see it as "pinker than that one".

If you have some accessories you bought as "red" and some of them are on the blue side and some are on the orange side, they will not look good together although you might not figure it out.

The good news is that if you know color will change, you can take the bedding and toss the paint samples on it and throw out all the ones with undertones that clash.

Here is a link that might be useful: understand undertones

This post was edited by lazygardens on Thu, Dec 13, 12 at 17:40

If you could get your hands on a paint deck, just looking at how it is arranged will give you some ideas--because what you will see is that there are relatively neutral versions of colors at the most pastel end of some of the strips, and that there are very similar looking beiges and tans at both ends of the deck and various points in between as colors transition from one hue to another. But the undertone is related to the "color" they are grouped with.

It's a seat of the pants way of exploration, but it gave me as much of an idea about neutrals available in commercial paints, as I got from mixing them myself in a color theory course.

Thanks, that makes sense. So if I have a room with blue accents and want to paint gray walls, a gray with blue undertones would look best? Am I on the right track?

I think that once you recognize the undertones, you just want the other colors to work well with that undertone. I have a gray room with blue undertones, and there are a lot of blues that don't necessarily work with it because blues can vary from greenish to purplish. Yellows and golds look great with it.

Look, look, look!

There are basic things you can learn from reading about the physics and chemistry of color and pigment, and about the color wheel and how opposite and adjacent colors affect the perceptions of each, and that the only thing we see is light reflected into our eyes, so light is everything...BUT there is no substitute for looking at everything you possibly can.

I recommend going to the museum to look at paintings and prints, and spending some time at the library and bookstore with expensively printed publications on design (to get the truest, richest color reproduction). Do that along with reading, and you will soon see much more clearly what is going on with color, and what appeals to you.

In my view, a room that is too monochromatic is not restful, because your eye wants a little bit of contrast somewhere to feel complete. That's why when a room is prepared for a photoshoot, you will often see an essentially blue and white room dressed with a green plant with yellow or orange flowers somewhere, or a cream and yellow scheme with purple flowers on the table.

I can usually see if a gray paint that looks more blue or green. Is that the undertone?

No. That's the color. Gray doesn't have an undertone. What many label as gray paint colors aren't really gray. They are colors that have been toned down to the point that they are closer to a neutral gray than they are their original -- saturated -- parent or root hue.

It's a toned-down green, a knocked back green, a grayed green. It's green. And the standard "rules" of color relationships apply dependent upon what kind of green you're dealing with. i.e. if it's a grayed down version of a yellow green, its complement will be colors from the red-violet neighborhood. If it's a blue-green then the complement will be red-orange.

So saturated (vivid) or destaruated (grayed), what kind of green is it? Blue-green, yellow-green? What other colors harmonize with that kind of green. If you feel a color clashes with the original, saturated, parent or root hue, then you're likely going to feel it clashes, does not harmonize with its desaturated, toned-down, grayed-down, knocked-back version either.

I understand that an undertone may be relative to its surroundings, but couldn't the paint colors just be labeled? i.e. white with green undertone, white with red undertone, etc.

Thank you. I see what you mean. However, now I have what I think is a different question. In a prior comment regarding grays, you mentioned that some grays have been toned down from an original parent hue. When I look at all of the grays in the paint store, how can I find out what each was toned down from?

When I look at all of the grays in the paint store, how can I find out what each was toned down from?

It's easy, hidden in plain sight. I explain how to find the hue family for any major paint brand's colors in this video.

OMG I get it now- Thanks Lori!

Thanks, Lori! That's most helpful!

Lori is the best! I was going back and forth among grays for my house's exterior, hoping to avoid any hints of blue or purple. When I was down to a couple of finalists, I put them through Lori's RGB process and discovered one was right where I wanted it to be. I mean, I sensed that subjectively and unscientifically, but seeing that it was objectively true gave me the confidence to proceed. The color turned out to be exactly what I wanted. And hahahaha, the neighbors across the street independently picked the same color. I see their house more than mine and, go, yep, that's the one.

I mean, I sensed that subjectively and unscientifically, but seeing that it was objectively true gave me the confidence to proceed.

That is exactly what it's about, Linelle. The color values are a supportive framework for everyone.

If you have a creative eye and good color sense, the data is like a second set of eyes, a second opinion that reinforces what you think you know. If you struggle seeing color attributes and are overwhelmed with color chips, the data organizes color for you in a logical sequence so you can make sense of what you're looking at.

And it's not hard. If you can read a clock, a thermometer, a compass then you can read a color wheel. Once you get color organized properly so you can make sense of it, then you can confidently move on to the creative artsy part and choose what looks good, what you love, what speaks to you. Because we can't color by numbers alone. It is the art and science of color, that balance is important.

One more thing "RGB" is EasyRGB, the title of the website I use but we don't actually use RGB or sRGB values for anything architectural color.

RGB values are about mixing channels of light to produce color. Like for a TV, a monitor, your smartphone, tablet, etc. RGB has nothing to do with paints, colorants, pigments. So if you're wanting to create a swatch of a paint color in an image editing program like Photoshop, for example, then you'd use the RGB values to make the swatch. Or HEX values because RGB and HEX values are the same color data values just expressed in different formats.