MOUNT OLIVE — Of the 3,500 colors created by Benjamin Moore & Co. at its research and development facility, a light grey will serve as the brand's trademark tone for 2019.

The color, Metropolitan AF-690, nearly matches the interior of the light booth used by company chemist and color specialist Emily Feuss to scrutinizes shades throughout her workday.

The booth's neutral background is reflected in the fabric of her lab coat and was selected because it eases eye strain, Feuss said. It also allows colors such as the 2018 color of the year, a fiery red called Caliente AF-290, to show true in contrast.

That juxtaposition is no accident, Feuss said.

"After a rich red like Caliente, it was likely going to be a neutral," she said. "What’s popular [are] always neutrals and beiges."

The colorants developed at Benjamin Moore's 90-acre facility off a busy two-lane road in Morris County are more advanced than ever. Yet, most of the company’s 3,500 hues could be considered neutrals, including the company’s 2019 color of the year.

Tracking the trends

The light grey is the type of tone that realtors say best sells homes and interior designers use to make purple pillows pop.

“The biggest trend for the last five, six years has been greys,” said Anita Kassel of Kassel Interiors in Upper Montclair. “Greys are safe, and it’s a nice backdrop.”

Pinks and reds, such as Caliente, have been popular in the last few years, Kassel said. However, painting a room those colors is a commitment, she said.

Greys and other neutrals allow color to be incorporated subtly, inexpensively and sometimes fleetingly, Kassel said. Pillows, rugs, chairs and the occasional accent wall serve as the vessels.

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“It’s not committing the room,” she said. “When I went to the forecast last year of Caliente red. I was like, there’s no way. We’re doing a red room. Nobody that I know would want to live in a red room.”

Beiges and whites were the thing, said Diane Mitchell of Wright Bros. Real Estate in Nyack, New York.

“Now it’s more like greys and light greens; just a wash of color, nothing dark," she said.

Buyers tend to shy away from dark, bold or bright colors, said Mitchell. Seeing what a room could be is much more difficult than seeing what it is, she said.

“One of my jobs is to say, ‘a little paint, done,’ but buyers these days want move-in ready, they don’t want projects,” she said. “If they hire somebody, it’s an expense. If they do it themselves, it’s a project.”

A commitment to color

No matter the color, all of Benjamin Moore’s paints are researched, developed and tested at the Mount Olive location. It’s Feuss’ job to tweak paint color prescriptions; the formulas that turn off-the-shelf cans into a tinted, wall-ready product.

The marketing department in Montvale attends art galas, trade shows and otherwise tracks trends to develop new color pallets. They still send in a stream of off-whites, greys and beiges, she said.

Feuss’ trained eyes are there to ensure colors new and old match the developed standard. That color must stay true whether in high gloss or matte; under fluorescent or natural light. Though some new “storytelling” paints are designed to change tone under different light sources.

The master standards Feuss uses to dial in a formula are kept frozen in black plastic bags to ensure their preservation. Some date to the 1970s, she said.

Though the colors remain the same, the paints, latexes and colorants used today are drastically different, said Gary Dandreaux, the vice president of product development.

The company has developed water-based colorants free of volatile organic compounds and new bases that allow for better coverage and stain resistance in recent years. Scuff proof and soft-touch finishes developed at the center, the company's only research and development center, have also hit the market.

To appease customers, the colors must match finishes that have been on their walls for years. The company must also innovate, improving fade-resistance, durability and gloss retention, Dandreaux said.

“The competition is relentless,” he said.

A state for the seasons

With today’s customers expecting finishes to last up to a decade or more, testing runs 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week at the facility.

Interior labs have chambers that blast samples with incessant light and spray an occasional mist to simulate long-term outdoor exposure.

The hallway walls are test panels. Coated squares of wood flooring are trampled in labs.

For outdoor mildew and UV tests, the company ships boards to outdoor facilities in Florida and Arizona. Yet, most of the outdoor testing is done onsite. Michael Conklin, a technologist who helps manage the test farm, said he wouldn't pick another spot if he could.

“It’s the perfect location,” Conklin said. “We get the freeze-thaw cycles, and we get 90-plus degree days. We get a little bit of everything here.”

The company created its first test farm on a Newark rooftop where its original manufacturing plant still operates as one of the company's five. The farm eventually moved to Lebanon before the Flanders facility opened in 1992.

Conklin and a colleague subsequently moved all the boards, some 20,000, to their fenced 5-acre home by minivan.

"It took about three weeks," he said.

Inside the Flanders test farm

Today, the center contains roughly 25,000 boards comprising more than 70 substrates. Most are wood: cedar, pine and mahogany, among other varieties. Aluminum, brick, vinyl, PVC and other composites are also coated with outdoor paints, stains and varnishes and tested for mildew, peel, fade and rust resistance.

"There's not that replicates exterior exposure," said Jim Bercaw, senior research and development manager. "The rubber really meets the road on the exposure tests."

About 18,000 of the farm's boards are under active evaluation, said Conklin. Some samples have been soaking up the sun for more than 20 years, he added.

Each board in the farm is slathered with at least two finishes, assigned a number for tracking purposes and placed on a metal rack facing due south or north. The edges are protected from the elements to study fade rates.

One of the board's finishes is a known product. That control finish is used to compensate for the natural deviations among boards. The other finish can be a new product under development by company chemists. It can also be a competitor’s blend bought off the shelf.

“We’re always happy to see those fail before ours,” Dandreaux said.

Problematic colors, generally darker hues, are often used for testing. If the pigment-saturated finish can withstand the elements, the lighter hues will probably perform just as well or better, Bercaw said.

Testing and tinkering

Products tested at the facility are transferred into label-free containers and given a code. A master database is used to track each product, but Conklin isn't generally aware of what specific product he's testing.

Conklin said the lack of labels keeps him and others from making excuses for the company's products.

Nick Tichenor, another company chemist, is likewise handed nondescript containers labeled in marker to test characteristics such as resistance to stains, water and scrubbing.

His lab is considered independent, though Tichenor said he is more than happy explain to Benjamin Moore chemists what happened during the tests to rework the formula.

Even with the streamlined formulas for colorants and base paints, creating a perfect paint remains out of reach, Tichenor said. Improve how the paint flows, which helps hide brush strokes or roller imprints to create a smooth surface, and it will splatter more as a result, he said.

“If you pull from one property, you’re probably weakening another,” he said.

Nick said he’s seen paints score a “10” in one category, but only hit 4s and 5s in others. The best paints typically score 7s and 8s across the board, he said.

There are also limitations to color, Feuss said. Bright, monochromatic colors are more difficult to recreate, she said.

Due to a new waterborne colorant system and paint bases that limit additives while covering dark substrates, however, hues like Caliente are now confidently brought to market, said Steven Minassian, senior product development manager.

“That color was possible, but the way it flows was not there,” Minassian said of Caliente. “It wouldn’t apply as well as it does now.”

Using color at home

With a background in fashion and fabric design, Kassel looks to global fashion magazines to pick up on color trends. When painting rooms, however, trends are not nearly as important as flooring, lighting and personal taste, she said.

To help determine the latter, Kassel said she also looks to fashion – all the while knowing trends are fickle and buying pants is much less of a commitment than repainting a wall.

“If I meet somebody really traditional, then I’m going to go to the grey family,” she said. “You have to go by what makes people feel comfortable [and] you need to be adaptive.”

Mitchell said she advises home sellers to select neutral colors to avoid clashing with a potential buyer's personal preference.

Her advice: go ahead and spend the money to repaint before taking the photos and listing a home. Failing to spend $1,000 on paint could lead to offers $5,000 lower.

“Paint and color is a personal choice,” Mitchell said. “You want to have something that’s going to have close to universal appeal and if it’s not going to have universal appeal, at least it’s not going to be unappealing.”

Kassel said greys currently are the standard. Still, she sees a shift into more uplifting colors “because we need some happiness.”

“Grey is sad, a little bit,” she said. “We need happy."

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