历史悠久的油漆颜色：数百年历史的房屋所有者的新见解和想法

喘着气是可听见的。在2011年底进入蒙蒂塞洛（Monticello）的餐厅时，随着游客乘坐灿烂的黄色墙壁，chat不休就停止了。确切地说，色相 - 铬黄色的色调产生了惊人的寂静。一位访客观察到：“这就像从蛋黄的内部看着世界。”对于反复的访客来说，冲击加倍，因为充满活力的黄色取代了自1936年以来为房间定下基调的微妙蓝色。

Why the change? Progress, you might say. Thomas Jefferson liked to beAu Courantand, in 1815, he got his hands on a supply of lead chromate yellow pigment, invented only a few years earlier in France. The color was fashionable, and few people complained of its intensity in an era when the after-dark illumination of candles and lamps produced the equivalent of fewer than five watts of electric light.

New Insights

Today, the science of paint analysis is providing new insights into early decorative schemes. Just a generation ago, the standard method of determining a paint chronology (that is, the sequence of colors applied to a surface) was simply to scrape, sand, or otherwise expose the lower layers. The colors were usually faded but some had lost their original tones due to sun exposure, oxidation, and the passage of time.

One consequence of such studies was the so-called “Williamsburg palette,” the product of early restoration work at Colonial Williamsburg, begun in the1920s. Even today, many people maintain the mistaken impression that our ancestors lived in a world of muted and “tasteful” shades.

In the last several decades, however, preservationists at Washington’s Mount Vernon, James Madison’s Montpelier, and countless other historic sites have benefited from the expertise of a new breed of technologically-savvy conservators. They employ cross-section microscopy, organic and elemental lab analyses, and other scientific techniques. The result is that restorers now can “see” what the naked eye cannot by reading the residues of pigments, oils, washes, and other media. By identifying the hues, color saturation, and the lightness of paint samples, paint analysts have produced new understandings of the tastes of the past.

说话的颜色

Often the paints historians find are surprisingly bright; many of the colors, like Jefferson’s chrome yellow, were fresh and new in their time.

• 在18世纪初，第一种化学合成的颜色Prussian Blue在柏林颜色使用铁和钾的盐化合物生产后就非常受欢迎。
• Verdigris Green是另一种创新，由将铜板悬挂在醋中的水晶制成。
• Before chrome yellow was first manufactured in 1819, other yellows were in use, including Turner’s Patent yellow, marketed in the 1780s.

当然，即使在开国元勋的年龄，有些颜料也不是新事物。其中包括：

• whiting (a form of calcium carbonate)
• 白铅
• indigo
• burnt umber
• 黄色的ocher
• traditional reds, including Venetian red and the purplish Spanish brown, each made with naturally occurring earth pigments in use since antiquity

然而，在十九世纪和20世纪初，选择范围将成倍扩展，使维多利亚时代的多染色涂料方案成为可能，以所谓的旧金山的“彩绘女士”为代表。

在工业前时代，这些颜色都没有在我们认为是理所当然的罐头和罐头中出售。每位画家都必须用干颜料将自己的油漆磨碎成粉末，然后将其与液体培养基混合，通常是亚麻籽油。这个过程很费力，因为颜料越彻底地被磨碎到粘合剂中，颜色越丰富，越均匀。偶尔使用水性介质甚至是牛奶的培养基（后者通常是牛奶，石灰和整洁的脚油的混合物）。

What Does This Mean for My Historic Home?

即使您是历史上有意识的房主，也无需在油漆厂中磨碎颜料或在铜锅中煮有质的油。If your house has an important architectural pedigree, you may wish to commission a paint analysis, but mainly you’ll want to consider clues you’ve found, such as old paint surfaces located in rarely repainted closets, atop moldings, or that emerged with the removal of old wallpaper. You may even wish to undertake a sand-and-scrape analysis yourself (if you do, keep in mind the colors are likely to be very much faded).

另一个潜在的指导来源是良好的work done at many historic sites. Most paint manufacturers have been paying attention to these findings, and the marketplace now has many hues that replicate popular colors from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century. That means old house owners can pay due regard to the historic character of their homes while using convenient water-based paints that offer easy clean-up and shorter drying times. Many of these products are also more environmentally friendly, as low- or no-VOC paints emit fewer volatile organic compounds.

选择颜色

Builders and homeowners in every era are, to some degree, subject to the prevailing tastes of their times: The differences are obvious when you compare, say, the elaborate Queen Anne color schemes of the 1890s to the austere white-on-white of some pre-Civil War Greek Revival houses.

Just like Thomas Jefferson did in his day, you get to exercise your taste when choosing paint colors for your home. If you don’t have an existing color scheme you’re trying to replicate, it still makes sense to pay heed to historic precedents. And there is good guidance available to help you choose colors that both please your eye and suit the style and heritage of your home. If you can fit your home into the timeline of American architecture, you’ll find clues to suitable color choices from a variety of resources, including:

• If you like early yellow houses,鲍勃游览一个在马萨诸塞州的剑桥，乔治·华盛顿将军和诗人亨利·沃兹沃思·朗费罗（Henry Wadsworth Longfellow）都居住。
• 咨询Valspar包含在国家历史保护地点的国家信托基金会标识并由Lowes销售的250个色调的颜色图表。
• 看一下方便的色彩指南加利福尼亚油漆，与历史悠久的新英格兰合作制作，该颜色具有149种颜色，可追溯到17世纪至20世纪的建筑风格。
• 英国公司Farrow & Ballsells high-quality paints made in small batches; consult their paint selection. What anglophile could resist colors with names like Rectory Red and Manor House Gray?
• Most major American paint manufacturers produce lines of historic colors, too, fromBenjamin Moore’s Historic Paint line到普拉特和兰伯特·威廉斯堡调色板。
• 查看亚博老虎机网页版鲍勃·维拉（Bob Vila）的历史涂料颜色指南。