Oh holy cats.

There's a lot to unpack here.

I'm only answering because you didn't use the word "undertone".

And that's a very good thing because we don't have to get over the hump of explaining that every color belongs to a hue family and the theory that colors have "undertones" is incredibly flawed.

We'll start with, And where does chroma fit into this?

Chroma and saturation are not the same thing.

There is a distinction between the two. With that said, most people use the terms interchangeably. Even some color scientist will state that chroma and saturation are redundant.

Again, they are not.

In terms of paint color, color for the built environment, the correct term to use is Chroma.

Chroma is the attribute of color that tells you how neutral or colorful a color looks.

We can quantify Chroma on a scale from 0 true neutral gray/black/white up to the full chromaticity of a hue. Each hue reaches full chromaticity at a different rate. Chroma does not have a specific termination point.

For me, a saturated colour has a lot of pigment, the colour is rich and intense, a muted colour is one more subtle, less pure, more earthy. It would be the difference between royal blue and slate blue.

Lori, I have read many or your posts and know that "undertone" is incorrect. :) Your website and it's wealth of information is what has taken me down this path of trying to understand color. I want to use this knowledge to ultimately select the proper colors for my cabinets, trim and wall color. I just need to understand how all my color choices fit together for a welcome and inviting space. Strongly considering hiring your services...what is your turnaround time for consulting services?

My understanding is that I want a saturated color as it will reflect more light back than a muted color and be more pleasing to the eye.

Not exactly.

The best color data point to use for comparing the reflectivity, lightness, and brightness of a color is LRV. Light Reflectance Value.

Good news is all paint brands publish the LRV for their colors. So, this is an easy one to get and use. You can do this on your own.

The higher the LRV number, the lighter, brighter and reflective the color is.

Added bit of info: brightness speaks to how light a color looks. Many use the terms bright/brightness to describe how grayed or colorful a color looks; they use it to describe how a quantity of chroma or saturation looks.

And that's not correct way to use the words bright, brightness.

Brightness is about lightness.

I have the paint formulas and the HEX codes and trying to learn how to put it all together.

The paint forumla: all colors are born in theoretical color space. In other words, paint colors are a kind of code before they're anything else. That code is used to formulate the recipe (paint formula) to make the color in a physical form. Like a gallon of paint.

The recipe of colorants provides absolutely zero information about how the color in the can is going to look when it's dry.

Architectural coatings is very different from the world of Fine Arts and mixing color by hand/eye.

There is NOTHING about color theory from the world of Fine Arts that applies to architectural coatings.

RGB Values & HEX Codes: Useless for your application. RGB Values and HEX Codes are the same thing. They are the same instructions expressed in two formats.

RGB and HEX are instructions for a device like your phone, monitor or tablet. They're instructions that tell a device how much of each channel of light (red, green, blue) needs to light up to make a specific color.

Neither value RGB or HEX, has anything to do with colors in real life. They don't define or describe color appearance. Which is why they're useless for understanding or specifying paint colors.

More info to digest. Thank you! If I were to hire your services what is your turn around time? I presume you are a busy lady with all of this knowledge!

Because I don't take bigger projects any more, turn around is usually a couple days. Depends on how many colors are involve, how much data needs pulled/anaylzed.