Colour Note: Harbour Blue (#7C8F99, LRV 26)

A grey-blue deep enough to hide a splash zone and neutral enough to work with timber. Harbour Blue is the palette's most practical dark colour: at LRV 26 it reads as a colour in daylight and as a near-neutral after dark.

Colour

#7C8F99

LRV

26

Undertone

cool grey-blue, minimal green

Family

Cool blues and greys

Undertone and the green trap

Most commercial blue-greys carry a green component, which is invisible in daylight and obvious under a warm bulb, where the wall turns teal. Harbour Blue has only a trace of green — its bias is toward grey and a small amount of red, which is why it stays blue-grey in a bathroom lit by 2700 K fittings.

The practical test is to look at a patch under the room's own lighting at night before committing. A blue that is right on a daylight swatch is regularly wrong under a warm fitting.

Light behaviour at LRV 26

• Daylight, window on the opposite wall: reads as a mid grey-blue with visible depth.
• Daylight, window on the same wall: reads almost black, because the wall is lit from behind the viewer.
• Single 2700 K bulb after dark: reads as a dark neutral, holding the room's edges without dominating.

That range is useful in bathrooms and studies, where the room is used at both ends of the day. It is a liability in a room that gets one hour of direct sun, where the wall will look black for most of the day and gold for one hour.

Pairing

Partner	Split	Effect
Sandbank #C9B79A	23 points	Tonal: warm against cool at similar depth
Chalk Wash #F2EDE4	59 points	Crisp: maximum definition, needs white joinery
Burnt Ochre #B8823C	0 points	Split-complement: same LRV, opposite temperature

The Burnt Ochre pairing is the interesting one. Two colours at the same LRV read as one field from a distance and separate only up close, which is a way of putting two colours in a room without the room looking banded.

Sheen and application

Satin in wet zones, eggshell in dry ones, matte only above 1800 mm. At LRV 26 any sheen difference is visible, so keep one sheen per wall — a matte wall meeting a satin wall at a corner shows as two different colours.

Coverage is good: two coats over LRV 50 and above. Over a strong yellow or a red, use a grey-tinted primer; a white primer under Harbour Blue will leave a chalky lift that survives two coats.

What matters here

• Only a trace of green, so it stays blue-grey under 2700 K fittings.
• Reads near-black when the window is behind the viewer — plan the wall.
• Same-LRV pairing with Burnt Ochre separates only at close range.
• Use one sheen per wall at LRV 26; a sheen change reads as a colour change.

Elsewhere on this wall

• Colour Note: Chalk Wash (#F2EDE4, LRV 85)
• Colour Note: Ochre Field (#D9A44A, LRV 42)
• Harbour Blue in the palette
• Cool blues and greys