Any Color You Like

I'm finally moving forward again with the trimmer for rebuilding all of the seats and recovering them. We spent a pleasant evening on the phone discussing foam densities, piping and general availability of the colors that I want. He a great guy, and I hope to see him prosper. We need more like him in the business.

In that vein, I've spent some time with a fantastic online app called Color Scheme Designer that lets even a dummy plunk in a thematic color and then, through the magic of software, see all of the variant schemes of colors that go with it to generate a cohesive look. You can buy a color wheel at an art store, but it is a pretty non-precise tool. CSD is a very precise tool, so that you can easily see triads, tetrads, monochromics, analogics and even accented analogics. When you're done tweaking, it can generate the data in many delightful ways that you can then take across the street to a shop and say "that color" with reasonable precision.

Now I would try to grade a priceless work of art with one of these kinds of tools. They're good to get you into the ballpark. But if you already know what some of the unchangeable colors are, and you need to quickly narrow down what your choices are for compliments, accents, and analogs, This is a great tool. Try and enjoy. I guarantee you'll waste at least five minutes playing with it just to see what it can do and how it works.

The two colors unlikely to change soon are the primary color on the Bus (Senegal Red) and
the color of the carpet I've chosen: Dark Chocolate. Nosiree. Not budging. So for the inside, I left the Red out of the equation and just concentrated on colors that would sync nicely with the Dark Chocolate carpet. I had two colors to pick: The vinyl edging for the seats, and the fabric material for the seat faces. I intended it to go nicely from a very dark color near the floor (where the dirt lives) up and up getting lighter as it goes, until visually, you 'hit the ceiling' which is white.

So I plugged in the dark brown and twiddled nobs and dials and here's what I have:

Carpet

Vinyl Edging and Seatbacks

Seat Facing

Perhaps this doesn't look right to you. That's ok. Everyone's monitor stinks. I checked this again three different monitors I know that are calibrated, so this actually does look 'right.'

For those of you having difficulty with the imagining, here's something a bit more literal:

So above is the color study for the bus interior. To the right is the Bus in its present primary color.

Now I say present color because I never was a fan of red. It is an attention getter and I'm not sure I want the attention. This is the golden bit for the CSD app listed above: By having it generate a color palette that has lots of compatible undertones, the bus could be repainted several different colors, including my favorites: Glasurite L630(07) Cobalt Blue, and L66B(60) Deep Sea Green. How do I know? I tested it against those colors. This really tickles me because it lets me grapple with the visualization problems without blowing my mind, and it leaves my options open to change the color of the vehicle later I choose to.

A complete breakdown of all of the colors in the triad (top row)
and two secondary color schemes that would be compatible with
the first scheme. This is much easier that just thinking, "brown would be nice."

So soon, I'll make my choices, pays my money, and hand the seat skeletons over to Vinyl Creations so they can be made beautiful. I have a dollar figure in mind. $1000 

We'll see how close he can hit that.