What Information Is in the ICI Paint Color Chart?
The trademarked ICI Colour Palette notation system assigns each Dulux Trade paint a color code made up of three categories of information: hue, LRV and chroma. Color charts for Dulux wall paints include color samples, the color’s commercial name and its assigned code. As of 2015, Dulux Trade colors find consistent use in the automotive industry.
On the ICI Colour Palette, hue refers to the dominant color in a shade. The hue value consists of two digits and two letters. The letters stand for hue intervals as arranged on a rainbow-colored wheel, with yellow, red, blue and green combining into eight wheel categories, which are listed as “YY,” “YR,” “RR,” “RB,” “BB,” “BG,” “GG,” “GY.” A two-digit number precedes the two letters and helps to better position a color within each interval.
The LRV is a number between zero and 99 that indicates the darkness or lightness of a color. The chroma is a value between “000” and “999,” and it indicates how subtle a color is. For example, “10RB11/250” is a possible Dulux Trade color code. In this example, “10 RB” is the hue, “11” is the LRV and “250” is the chroma.
Dulux wall paint color charts are organized into nine color families. In the Colour Palettes section of the Dulux website, visitors select a color family before choosing between categories of shades, such as “clean red and pinks,” and “muted reds and pinks.” The company has also created the Dulux Colour Wall online tool and the Dulux Vizualizer application. These tools display color codes and allow users to preview the look of a color in different kinds of rooms.
As of 2015, the British company Imperial Chemical Industries, or ICI, no longer exists. AkzoNobel bought Dulux, ICI’s paint manufacturing company, in 2008.
