Colour selection techniques
The best way to study colour is to use it' as a maxim common among designers who care about colour in the built environment.
The architect, Sir Hugh Casson, once wrote that '... the best way to study colour is to use it'. Indeed, many architects and specifiers make trial simulations of their proposed colour schemes directly on site before committing to the colour of the actual building.
A technique of architectural colour selection has been devised in France by Jean Philippe Lenclos. This creates schemes from a documentation of all the prevalent colours of a building site using colour chips.
Jean Philippe Lenclos, the leading French designer, has successfully developed a method of initial colour selection. His technique involves the colour-matching of all the main colours found on and near a site using sample chips from a painter’s colour fan. Once the chips are colour-matched and assembled into a representative palette, the final colour selection is then made with direct reference to the site palette.
The late professor A. C. Hardy devised a simple method of testing a proposed architectural colour that involves photographing proposed building colours against the actual site.
Another method, devised by the late Professor A. C. Hardy, photographs a proposed colour or combination of colours for a building against the site area itself. A sample of the colour or colour combination is held by hand [or supported on a thin wire] at a point from which, through a camera viewfinder, its scale and location appears compatible with that of its intended setting. To compensate for focal discrepancy, a Macro lens is used to photograph the resultant image, which then provides a degree of confidence in the final colour selection.
The strategies of blending or contrasting can make a contribution to the environment. They are the principles which informed the development of the Colorcoat HPS200 cladding range.
Whichever technique is used for aiding colour judgements, the colours selected must contribute to the built environment, either by blending or contrasting. Indeed, the Colorcoat HPS200 palette has been devised on these very same principles.
