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Inspiration from Benjamin Moore’s Knoxville Gray

Maxwell Ryan
Maxwell RyanCEO
Maxwell left teaching in 2001 to start Apartment Therapy as a design business helping people to make their homes more beautiful, organized AND healthy. The website started up in 2004 with the help of his brother, Oliver. Since then he has grown ApartmentTherapy.com, added TheKitchn.com, our home cooking site, and has authored four books on design. He now lives with his daughter in a lovely apartment in Brooklyn.
published Mar 23, 2010
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I confess…years ago, Apartment Therapy posted an image my business card on the internet (above), and I still get emails about the color “blue” I used. That color wasn’t blue at all, but Benjamin Moore’s Knoxville Gray, a mysterious and amorphous neutral that changes color throughout the day — greenish at night, bluish in the morning and more solidly gray in full sun.

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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

But a change of computers and an upgrade in Photoshop suddenly made my original image much more saturated. A light went off in my head and I milked it even further, thinking the new color on my business card would be more seductive to new clients, and that nobody would be the wiser.

Now I put it to you, what would you use to recreate my imaginary color on your own walls? I’ve used Benjamin Moore’s ‘Bella Blue’ (BM 720) to similar effect. I’m looking at the new Reflecting Pool from
Ralph Lauren (VM132) and also G21040 from my Fine Paints of Europe deck.

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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

PAINT USED
• Knoxville Gray from Benjamin Moore (HC-160)

SIMILAR COLORS
• Bella Blue from Benjamin Moore (BM 720)
• Reflecting Pool from Ralph Lauren (VM132)
• G21040 from Fine Paints of Europe (G21040)

Images: 1-3 Mark Chamberlain, 4-5 Benjamin Moore’s Personal Color Viewer

Mark Chamberlain, interior and decorative painter

Originally published 6.27.2006 – MGR
Republished from 5.8.2007 – AA

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