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Advertising supplement presented by

Benjamin Moore has successfully removed all solvents that are responsible for the odor of traditional paint, as well as contributing to placing harmful VOCs into the environment. The products are high in hiding, odorless during application, rapid-drying, and clean up easy with water. They are also VOC compliant, and allow for a quick return to service/occupancy. 

The products are available in three finishes: flat, eggshell and semi-gloss. Each finish comes in a pure white has a high light reflectance value (LRV) of 90. Tinting bases in each finish will produce an additional 1,100 custom shades, giving clients a wide choice of colors.

Among the new tools to make color choices easier are “personal color viewers,” available online, which enable users to see their room and click through thousands of different color choices and combinations to see the effect prior to purchase.

Color samples allow you to “try on” a color before committing to the time and expense of painting an entire room. Interior designers and professional painters do a “brush out” when deciding on color when deciding between several shades of a particular color, or to see how a color is influenced by lighting.

Ask William “Billy” Rosbottom about architects and color and he quickly cites Terence Riley, a partner in Keenen/Riley Architects, New York, and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art.

“Architects are afraid of color for a couple of reasons,” Riley contends. “The first is our fairly well-justified fear of fashion. Who wants a building that turns out to be like an avocado refrigerator, the equivalent of permanent bell-bottoms. The second reason is the unjustified belief that color is not critical. Not enough architects approach color in an intellectual way; we are trained that the ideas are in the lines.”

Rosbottom, a former interior designer for a Los Angeles environmental design firm, today manages Sto Studio Atlanta, one of 25 Sto studios worldwide. Sto manufactures a broad range of both organic and inorganic silicate and synthetic plasters and admixtures including a marble powder suitable for polished finishes from satin to high-gloss.