How to read LRV when choosing paint
Every color page on this site lists an LRV. It is the most useful number on the page and the most often misread, so this is what it means and what it does not.
What the number measures
Light Reflectance Value is the percentage of visible light a surface sends back instead of absorbing. It runs from 0 to 100, where 0 is a theoretical perfect black and 100 a theoretical perfect white. Real paint does not reach the black end - the deepest colors in this catalog sit around 2.5 - and only a pure, undimmed white reaches the top.
That is the whole definition. It says nothing about hue, nothing about how saturated a color is, and nothing about whether it will suit your room. Two colors with an LRV of 45 can be a muddy olive and a clear mid-blue.
What each range does in a room
The bands below are the ones this site uses to describe a color in words. They are practical rather than perceptual - they describe how a wall behaves, not how your eye encodes it.
| LRV | What to expect |
|---|---|
| 80-100 | Returns most of the light that reaches it. Lifts a dim room, and can read stark or glary under strong direct daylight. |
| 60-80 | Returns more light than it absorbs. Bright enough to open up a north-facing room without going flat white. |
| 40-60 | Holds its color in daylight without noticeably darkening the room. Most mid-tone walls live here. |
| 20-40 | Absorbs more than it gives back. Reads deep, and needs decent lighting to show its color at all. |
| 0-20 | Absorbs nearly everything. Reads close to black except in direct sun. |
Two practical consequences. First, the same paint behaves differently by orientation: a north-facing room (in the northern hemisphere) gets cool, indirect light all day, and a color at LRV 55 there will look markedly heavier than the same color on a south-facing wall. Second, LRV compounds across surfaces. A room with an LRV 30 wall, an LRV 30 ceiling and a dark floor is not three times darker than one dark wall - it is closer to a cave, because the light that would have bounced back off the ceiling is being absorbed too. If you want a deep wall color, keeping the ceiling high-LRV buys most of the light back.
Published LRV and calculated LRV
Some manufacturers publish an LRV for every color. Some publish it for part of their range, and some publish none at all. Where a brand publishes the figure, this site shows the brand’s own number and says so. Where it does not, the value is calculated from the color’s sRGB relative luminance and labelled calculated on the page.
The calculation is close but it is not the manufacturer’s measurement. Checked against 200 published Sherwin-Williams values, the calculated figure landed within 0.33 LRV, averaging 0.10 - near enough to choose paint by, not near enough to quote in a specification. Where the difference matters to you, use the brand’s published figure and treat ours as a cross-check.
Two reasons a real measurement can differ from an arithmetic one: the paint’s finish changes how much light comes back to the eye (a gloss returns more of it specularly than a flat does), and a hex value is a screen approximation of a mixed, pigmented surface in the first place.
LRV is not the same as lightness
You will see two lightness-ish numbers on a color page: LRV, and the L* of its CIE L*a*b* value. They are not interchangeable. LRV is linear in light - it is essentially the Y of the color’s XYZ, scaled to 100. L* is deliberately non-linear, compressed to follow human perception, so equal steps in L* look like equal steps in lightness while equal steps in LRV do not.
The practical version: an LRV of 50 is not the midpoint of the light-to-dark range you see. A color that looks halfway between black and white sits near L* 50, which is an LRV of about 18. If you pick a “mid-tone” by LRV alone you will end up with something considerably lighter than you pictured.
Using it here
Every color page shows its LRV, and whether it was published or calculated. To work the other way - from a number to a color - the search page filters on an LRV range across every brand at once, so “everything between 55 and 65 in a warm neutral” is one query.
A caveat that applies to all of it: the swatch on your screen is not the paint. Screens vary, and they emit light rather than reflect it. Use LRV to narrow a shortlist, then get a physical sample and look at it on your own wall, at more than one time of day.
Common questions
What does LRV mean in paint?
LRV, or Light Reflectance Value, is the percentage of visible light a painted surface reflects instead of absorbing, on a scale from 0 to 100. Zero is a theoretical perfect black and 100 a theoretical perfect white; real paint runs from about 2.5 at the dark end to the high 80s for the brightest whites.
What is a good LRV for a room?
Above 60 for walls in a room that needs to feel bright, 50 to 70 for general interiors, and below 30 for a colour meant to read as deep and enclosing. A north-facing or windowless room needs a higher LRV than the same colour scheme would need facing south, because there is less light to give back.
How is LRV calculated?
LRV is the Y value of a colour in CIE XYZ, which is the same quantity as the L* of its Lab value re-expressed as a percentage. Every LRV on this site is calculated that way from the manufacturer's published hex value, not measured off a physical chip with a spectrophotometer.
Why does an LRV here differ from the brand's published number?
Because the two are measured from different things. A manufacturer reads a painted chip with a spectrophotometer, which captures the real pigment and sheen; this site derives the value from the hex the manufacturer publishes, which is already an approximation of that chip. Expect a point or two of difference, and use the brand's figure where a specification depends on it.
Does LRV tell you what colour a paint is?
No. LRV describes lightness only and says nothing about hue or saturation, so two colours with an LRV of 45 can be a muddy olive and a clear mid-blue. Use LRV to predict how a room will feel, and the family and undertone to decide what the colour actually is.
Does LRV matter for exterior paint?
Yes, more than for interiors. A high-LRV facade reflects heat instead of storing it, dark exteriors on wood and composite cladding run hot enough to warp or fade, and several cladding manufacturers void their warranty below a stated minimum LRV. Check the cladding's own limit before choosing.