Please take a look at our ‘Documents & Downloads’ section and find all test reports of our newly introduced Light Reflectance Values (LRV).
These values help you support in advising the specifyers, architects and designers.
Light Reflectance Value is often confused with the term intensity. Intensity is about vividness or dullness, is the colour clear or muted.
Value speaks strictly to the lightness or darkness of a colour.
The LRV is the total quantity of visible and useable light reflected by a surface in all directions and at all wavelengths when illuminated by a light source.
It is a measurement that tells you how much light a colour reflects, and conversely how much it absorbs. LRV runs on a scale from 0% to 100%. Zero assumed to be an absolute black and 100% being an assumed perfectly reflective white. An absolute black or perfectly reflecting white does not exist in our everyday terms. Approximately speaking, the average blackest black has a LRV of 5% and the whitest white 85%.
The Light Reflectance Value is a guideline. A relative point of reference for predicting how light or dark a colour will look and feel once applied to the walls. It is not a set standard by which to choose colours. Rather an indicator to help you make your best guess.