Comment by Syzygies | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Syzygies | Hacker News Reader

Two decades ago I painted my apartment with artist grade titanium white acrylic. It still looks new.

A temperament that I share with everyone on HN is a suspicion of convention. So many common practices are dumb that it's hard to see each one coming in advance. One is always on edge waiting for the next shoe to drop. I'm supposed to spend days clearing my apartment, so the bottom rung of the construction trades can come in using paint that only lasts four years, dabbing hanging peels back in place with their brushes? Why did I actually have to go through this once to see this is the poster child for "stupid"?

I've also never understood the fashion choice of "off white". Titanium white is brighter, a better lit room day or night. It can become a color mirror, where a corner looks red because a red object is nearby.

For anyone tempted to try this, the student grades have less pigment, and the most expensive brands have the most pigment. It would also appear in an art supply store that there's only one kind of primer, and mediums vary only by gloss. Going to the manufacturer's sites, there are variations intended to survive the outside wall of a building. One could probably wind up someone on a phone call, and get excellent advice on which products to use. On the other hand, I used what I found at Pearl Paint in NYC, and it held up fine.

The primary ingredient in housepaint is rutile titanium dioxide particles, which have a very high refractive index. The particles are suspended in a carrier which, when drying, creates air voids. The air/TiO2 refractive index change, as light bounces around inside, is what gives white paint it's hiding/wall covering power.

In other words, artist paint and house paint use the same base pigment. Almost all commercially available "white" housepaints are based on titanium dioxide pigment. The special thing about artist paint is the extraordinarily high concentration of pigment.

I would think that high end construction paint also has more pigment. Not sure how it would compare, but I know painting a large area with artist grade paint could get exorbitantly expensive.

Once I recognized that art supplies can substitute for construction materials, this opened up a world for me. For example, though miscommunication I had many holes to fill in some period kitchen cabinet doors in my house. The normal sequence would be filler, primer, cabinet paint. Instead I played with stiff acrylic modeling compound. I got the paint store to give me a sample of what they squirt into the paint, and I played around with the pigment and different mediums until the color and gloss was an exact match. Now I could fill each hole in one pass, no painting, and no one could find the hole afterwards.

> I've also never understood the fashion choice of "off white".

Personally, if it's a room I'm going to be relaxing in (bedroom, living room, etc.) as opposed to a work room, I strongly prefer an off-white over a bright white. It's more muted and relaxing.

I think the argument is that you can produce a relaxing shade by using pure white and controlling the lighting / decor, rather than relying on paint color to subtract certain colors out.

For instance, bright white paint + 2800k lamps may vibe similar to eggshell + 3200k lamps.

I see. That seems like an overly complex solution to a very simple problem, though. Not to mention the unnecessary use of electricity.

Your using electricity in either case, and they're both of the same complexity.

Well, I'm only using electricity at night. During the day, the sun lights everything. But now that I say that, I realize that's not going to be the same for everybody.

But adjusting the wall color through lighting is more complex than just having the walls be painted the shade you want.

All lighting adjusts the 'wall color'. It's impossible for it not to.

There's no man made source that exactly replicates the sun.

Well, sure, I'm speaking in approximations. My only point is that my personal preferences mean that a bright white room would drive me crazy. I could fix that with various methods, sure, but it seems to me the easiest and best solution is just to paint it a color I would prefer.

I'm certainly not saying that anyone else is wrong for having tastes that differ from mine.

If you're prepping a home to sell, sure.

Stark white in a brightly lit room can be overwhelming. Sure you could dim the whole room, but now you've dimmed everything. For something like a gathering room, where a person may want to be reading, such a solution doesn't work.

And I'm not using 'soft' white bulbs that make everyone look jaundiced to hide the wall color.

Much easier all around to go offwhite(or anything but white) on the walls, using neutral 3kish bulbs to your preferred brightness.

Dimming and color tone are not the same thing.

Yes, using paint color to control room light is easier. It’s just less flexible. If you just want to throw a bunch of furniture and lights in, paint color is simpler.

If you want the flexibility for the room to present as daylight white sometimes and cozy amber evenings at other times, it takes more work in lighting and for furniture choices, and neutral white walls increase flexibility.

Neither answer is “better” in some objective sense. It’s just a simplicity vs power choice.

Unless you let little to no natural light into the room, you need to have something that works with sunlight, which is most residential settings.

I have Hue color lights in every room except the bathroom.

Very worth the extra expense!

> And I'm not using 'soft' white bulbs that make everyone look jaundiced to hide the wall color.

Get bulbs with a higher color rendering index. I made the mistake of getting warm white LED bulbs from the local hardware store. Those things are positively yellow. The warm LED bulbs from IKEA on the other hand aren't any bluer, but they keep white looking like white.

I'm actually really picky about that, I've probably had 10 different brands at this point. Absolutely cannot stand it when things look too yellow, or too blue.

Ended up on the sketchily named "energetic" brand from Amazon. 3000k, and claims to be CRI80+. Unsure which of those is more important, but I finally found my goldilocks bulb.

If your main concern is lighting effect, you should just be using LRV.

Sheen has almost no effect on LRV and thus how much light reflected from a fixture is bounced in the room.

While it is true that matte finishes have particles that are diffusing light so that the surface does not look as shiny, no sheen is actually specular enough to reflect a meaningful amount of light.

Especially compared to the color

(This is crazy for people to accept at first but it is in fact correct and you can prove it to yourself if you want)

The sad but interesting story of Pearl Paint. https://www.artistsnetwork.com/magazine/pearl-paint/

Because it's the chromatic equivalent of happy hardcore techno. Sometimes you just not in the mood for that.

> Pearl Paint in NYC, and it held up fine.

I miss Pearl Paint. It was strangely fun to go up those stairs.

[in case you're curious https://www.artistsnetwork.com/magazine/pearl-paint/]

Oh my god. Thank you for this. I haven't thought about that place in more than 30 years and now all these memories of going there with my grandfather are flooding back.

https://www.vulture.com/2014/04/6-new-york-artists-on-the-cl...

I was shocked to find out it is closed (fairly recently actually). Last I felt this way in newyork was when they closed the art cinema close to lincoln center back in the day. (Don't remember the name now.)

Did you buy it by the tube? How many thousands of dollars did that cost?

Why the negativity towards and when did painters become the bottom rung of construction trade? (Thought those were earth workers but I’m just kidding - question still remains)

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