Cover graphic for episode 67 of Talking Home Renovations, "Choosing Paint Colors". The background is a photo of rainbow paint chips spread out in an arch. The red podcast logo appears in the bottom right corner.

One of the final details of a home renovation is choosing paint colors for the walls. This episode features a paint specialist who really knows paint options.

When I really start thinking about color beyond choosing paint colors, it is too much for my brain. As you all know, I’m just an architect and not a color theorist or a scientist. Years ago I read mini-course on color for my continuing education credits. My recollection is that the article was about the difficulty of color matching between objects, but somewhere in there the article addressed the fact that color is not a property of an object because the color an object appears to be is dependent on the light in which we see the object. Also that same article mentioned that all of our eyes are different (as are all our organs and bodies) and our rods and cones differ from one to another person and so does our perception of color. Whoa.

Or maybe I read that in the article about how dogs see the world. I was very interested in that for some reason about 10 years ago. I found a simple video about the way different creatures see the world. Click here to watch. I also found this fun website if you’d like to interact a little more with this subject.

Two versions of the same picture of dog toys. One is "What you see" with normal colors. The other is "What your dog sees" with the red and green colors toned down so they're indistinguishable.
Two versions of the same landscape. One has normal colors, and the other is blurred out of focus except for in the very middle and is dim, with only blue and green tones visible.
This is reportedly what a cat sees. How do they know? Genuinely asking.

dog vision image from BCSPCA.com and cat vision image from wired.com