Distinguishing color in Corbusier's house.

When we arrived in Corbusier's house and were told that there were 38 colors used in the color palate I saw it as a game, so I tried to find all of them!

Well I was only able to find 28 when we walked through. I labeled them as:

Blue, sea foam green, burnt orange, light blue, black, dark green, sherbet orange, chocolate brown, light teal, light gray blue, warm yellowish neutral, salmony neutral, light mustard yellow, light chocolate brown, mid gray-blue, light neutral yellow, nearly white gray, nearly white yellow, mid cool gray, mid warm gray, nearly black brown, cool black, nearly white warm neutral, nearly white cool neutral.

I think that the evolution of the specificity in the naming of the colors as they went on is a good example of exactly how complex the color palate of the house actually is. I think that since the first color I saw in the house was an ultramarine blue I assumed the colors would always be more obvious than they were and simply labeling the color as blue seemed appropriate... until I saw a handful of slightly different blues ranging from the ultramarine blue to cool whites.

I noticed that the color palate was limited to blues/greens, oranges/yellows and their neutrals spanning from warm brown, gray, to black (various warm and cool in each)

I think that the house was strategically painted because the way that the colors are in relation to one another sometimes make it hard to determine if I was seeing the same hue as others that were similar in the house or if it was indeed a slightly different hue. This made me think about how one can even label color. I decided that I can only label color by relating and comparing it to another color, and it was the layout of the house that didn't always grant me the opportunity to see similar looking colors together to compare their differences. However, where similar colors were sometimes placed in separate rooms, I found that there was a few instances where similar colors would be placed against each other as if to point out their subtle but distinct differences. For example, I noticed two walls intersecting, one warm white and the other cool white. Now that I think about it, this is probably why I began to question similar colors from room to room in the first place, because I began to see how minute the differences were at times.

So in the end, I stand by what I say. A color can only be named accurately by forming some sort of relationship to a surrounding color.