Color Saturation
One of the keys to understanding color is to isolate the key properties and understand how each affects our perception. In earlier posts, we have already discussed hue and chroma. And today we are covering a third key property: saturation which refers to the amount of pigment in a color and describes how vivid or intense a color appears.
Read on: I will go over all the ins and outs of color saturation and the number one mistake I see when homeowners make when it comes to picking paint colors. Hint: it has to do with saturation!
What Is Color Saturation?
Let’s talk about color saturation—the often misunderstood but incredibly important part of how we experience color in our homes. If you’ve ever brought home a paint chip that looked just right in the store, only to have it feel way too intense on your wall, there’s a good chance saturation played a role.
In this post, I’ll break down what saturation actually means, how it’s different from chroma (yes, they’re not the same), and why understanding it can help you feel more confident when choosing colors—whether you’re painting a room, putting together a mood board, or just trying to figure out why that “soft sage green” suddenly looks neon in your living room.
Definition Of Color Saturation: In plain English
Saturation refers to how intense or pure a color appears. High-saturation colors feel loud and full of life. Low-saturation colors are quieter and more complex. Neither is better—they just bring different things to a space.
As an artist, I describe it like this: The more of a single hue pigment you add to the base or paint medium the more you will increase the saturation.
Hue, Value, and Saturation: The Three Pillars of Color
To fully understand saturation, it helps to see it in the bigger picture of color theory.
- Hue is the basic color name or family—red, blue, green, etc. Read about hue here.
- Value is how light or dark a color is.
- Saturation is how intense or muted it is.
Take a classic navy blue: same hue as a bright sky blue, but it has a lower value (it’s darker) and usually lower saturation too. Understanding this trio makes it so much easier to figure out why some colors feel airy and soft while others feel grounded or dramatic.
Saturation Vs Chroma
Let’s talk about two words that get thrown around a lot in color conversations: chroma and saturation. They’re super close in meaning, but they’re not quite the same:
- Chroma: Think of chroma as how colorful a color is compared to a gray of the same lightness. It’s all about intensity, without changing how light or dark the color is. In color theory terms, chroma is measured relative to a neutral gray. So the more chroma a color has, the farther it is from gray on the spectrum.
- Saturation: Saturation is how colorful a color looks compared to its own brightness. So it’s not being compared to gray, but rather to how much pure light (like white) is mixed in. If you increase a color’s saturation, it gets bolder—but it might also look darker, because it’s moving away from that light, airy version of itself.
Now, If you want to geek out more about this check out the Munsell Color System. This was a color theory system created more than a hundred years ago that employs some beautiful and helpful color diagrams to show these concepts visually. If this is all making you glaze over, you don’t need to memorize all this, but knowing this helps when you’re staring at 12 nearly identical swatches and wondering why one feels more “alive” than the others
How Saturation Affects the Feel of a Room
Color isn’t just visual—it’s emotional. And saturation plays a huge role in how a room feels:
- Highly saturated colors: In larger spaces, highly saturated colors can become tiring and seem unsophisticated or childish. However, in smaller amounts, like on accent walls or on furniture, these brighter hues can bring energy, playfulness, and boldness. Deeply saturated colors can work well in a powder rooms, in low lighting areas or featured in smaller amounts in kid’s space.
- Desaturated colors feel more sophisticated, subtle, and calming. They’re the go-to for living rooms, bedrooms, or anywhere you want to chill out.
How To Avoid The Most Common Paint Color Mistake
The most common paint mistake I see is someone picked out a paint color by using a paint chip, but once it was on the wall, it was either way too bright or a totally different color than they thought.
The reason this happens is that paint chips are super deceiving! It’s not our fault. Our brains are wired to ignore subtle things and notice obvious things. It’s true! This being the case we go straight for the brighter colors and have a really hard time seeing subtleties in low-saturation paint. That’s how we end up grabbing a paint chip that is more saturated than we want.
To avoid this mistake, we have to trick our brains! To do this, we compare colors so we are able to pick up the underlying hues. Once our brains are attuned to the colors undertones, we can then more easily picture how it will look at a larger scale.
Case Study: Picking a Blue Paint Color
Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you wanted to paint your living room a lovely historical blue paint color. So you pull out the Benjamin Moore Historical collection and flip to the blue section. You spot “Whipple Blue” and think, oh that’s pretty.
Friends, do not paint your living room with this color. Whipple is more saturated than the look you really want. Trust me.
The problem is, when you see it on the fan deck, the Whipple Blue is making all the other colors around it seem gray by comparison. As I said, our brains are wired to do this so it is not your fault!
Instead, you have to look at much more grayed out colors and study them systematically. For example, look at Brewster Gray in the image below.
When we grabbed the fan deck we totally overlooked this color because our brains say “gray” not “blue.” Right?
Wrong: Brewster Gray is not gray my friends, it is blue. You can see this fact by comparing it to other colors. I’ll show you three examples:
Example 1: Compare it first to my favorite neutral gray, Repose Gray from Sherwin Williams. Here you can clearly see that Brewster is a blue with green undertones.
Example 2: Next, place it side by side with a color from the opposite side of the color wheel and you will see its true blue nature. Here next to Cappuccino Muffin the Brewster Gray appears like a dusty blue shade.
Example 3: You can also look at it compared to a similar color with a similar value and saturation but in a slightly different hue. When compared to a slightly greener color you can also tell how blue this paint is.
Above you can see how Brewster Gray appears when it is used in large amounts. It is decidedly NOT gray at all but actually a gorgeous historical blue color. Read more about Brewster Gray and see more photos of how I used it in my home.
Tips for Choosing the Right Saturation in Your Space
If you’re trying to figure out which version of a color will work best in your home, keep these tips in mind:
- Consider Low and Artificial Lighting. Our eyes are more sensitive to the nuances of color in natural light. Meanwhile, low or warm artificial light tends to limit the perceived spectrum. If you are only going to use a space at night (like a TV room or den) then test out a more deeply saturated paint color. This will compensate for the dull artificial light and give you the look you want, even if you mostly use a space at night.
- Exteriors Need More Saturation: Natural daylight washes out exterior paint colors. That’s why I tell my Color Consulting clients to test out a range of colors including a few shades darker and some that are more saturated. Try one of our favorite greens for exteriors.
- Watch for undertones. Even muted colors have a temperature—some lean warm (like a soft greige), others cool (like a dusty blue). Saturation and undertone work together, and getting the balance right makes a huge difference. Read more about color temperature here.
- Pair thoughtfully. High- and low-saturation colors can work beautifully together—but you want contrast to feel intentional. Try pairing a bold terra cotta with a soft, chalky pink rather than two almost-the-same tones.
- Think about the room’s function: Want energy and creativity? Lean higher. Want calm and relaxation? Go lower. But remember with highly saturated colors, less is more. Think feature wall- not color drenching!
- Call In The Experts: Hire a color consultant for a virtual color consultation. Paint brands like Sherwin-Williams and Farrow & Ball often have collections that show the same hue across a range of saturation levels. These are goldmines for seeing how subtle shifts can change everything.
In Closing… Saturation Is the Secret Sauce
Color saturation might not be the first thing you think about when you’re choosing a paint color—but once you get the hang of it, it can totally transform how you approach color. It’s the secret sauce that makes a space feel intentional, harmonious, and, most importantly, you.
If you want more tips on reading paint chips, understanding undertones, or building a palette with confidence, stick around—or reach out for a virtual color consult. I’d love to help you see color in a whole new way.
