With so many barely distinguishable shades on the colour chart, choosing paint colours can be a pleasure and a painOkay, for the backyard, I want this colour, pointing excitedly to the little square of paint in the catalogue labelled Zambezi Rocks.迷你倉It's got a cool name, I reasoned. It sounds like some sort of slogan for an African freedom fighter.My interior designer K.C. made a face."Years ago, when you first bought the house, I asked you to choose a colour for the roof terrace and what did you choose?" he said drily.Um, Zambezi Rocks? I treaded cautiously, realising a scolding was around the corner."And then what happened?"It was all coming back to me now. The sick sinking feeling of a mistake that grew and grew every time I stepped out onto the terrace.Until one day when one of my close friends finally could not hold back his frank assessment."It's bird-s*** green, isn't it?"Within a month, I had the terrace repainted.Now I'm renovating my house again and am about to fall back into the same old mossy green-grey trap.Colour is such a funny thing. It's based on the rock-solid scientific foundations of physics and human physiology, yet it's so subjective.Two people can look at the same colour and disagree on whether it is blue or green, even before there is any conversation as to whether it's a "nice" colour.Great philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein have even argued that colour is such a slippery concept that what holds it together is nothing more than an artificial truce among people.In reality, they all individually see something slightly different, but agree to call the colour "purple" or "orange".As a result, colour isn't a logically uniform or absolute concept and words and meaning can go only so far.He once famously said: "There is gold paint, but Rembrandt didn't use it to paint a golden helmet."Then, there is the whole other science of what emotions or states of mind that colours can stir up.Apparently in psychology, there are four primary colours. Red has the longest wavelength and is easily seen, so it is the "physical" colour that denotes courage and defiance, while blue is the "intellectual" colour that suggests intelligence but also aloofness.Yellow is the "emotional" colour that boosts one's confidence and self-esteem, but it is also the colour of irrationality and anxiety. Green is a colour that the eye does not need to adjust to in any way and hence is the colour of balance and harmony, but also boredom and stagnation.And finally, there is the dimension of personal taste. People say everything, from your age, star sign, nationality and income group will affect the way that you appreciate colours and whether you like one shade over another.It is for all these reasons that choosing paint colours for the home is such a singular experience that sits exactly on the boundary between pai文件倉 and pleasure.The pain comes from the disagreements you will have with loved ones - heated arguments, even. Someone once told me that it was over a paint catalogue that she confirmed a nagging suspicion that she had married a man with irreversibly crass taste.There is also the pain of living with a mistake and knowing what a hassle it will be to undo it (even though you can).Here, everyone seems to have an embarrassing story about an awful colour he painted his room in his teenage years. Mine was bright pink, to go with black Ikea furniture, and another friend recently confessed to bright sea-blue walls with fish murals on them.But the pleasure (oh, the indescribable pleasure!) of going through 50 shades of grey, as I have been doing, and slowly ruminating on the dreams and desires that each one of them could unlock.Should the bedroom be swathed in a dense Chelsea Fog that befits the charming houses and buildings of the upscale London neighbourhood?Or should I go for something closer to the water - the greenish hue of a Seaside Village or the lights and shadows reflecting off a Silver Reef?Maybe it should be a whiter-grey like the vastness of a Snowfield, the softness of Swansdown or the purity of Song Porcelain.Perhaps it should be an abstract shade defined by a well-chosen and telling word - like Faithful or Dark Secret.In the end, lost in all the little colour squares barely distinguishable from one another, I found myself wondering if Maldivian Clouds really look any different from the clouds here or anywhere else in the world.Or if the Canadian Sky in Vancouver or Toronto is really as dreary as it looks to me here.It took me almost a week, in the end, to decide on all the new paint colours for the house.Instead of Zambezi Rocks, K.C. suggested a deeper, richer Kenyan Green for the backyard where the plants were, but my heart had long moved on, away from the African continent.I took the colour chart to breakfast.Sitting at Ya Kun one morning, I held the leaves of the potted plants next to me against one small colour sample square after another until I finally decided on Burmese Beige.A colleague who has long learnt to opt out of this game said she really didn't see the point of all this."Whatever colour you choose, you are going to be sick of it in a few months," she said matter-of-factly."So just paint everything white. You'll be much happier."I didn't dare tell her how many shades of white there were in the catalogue but I took the point.A life free of the daily regret of choosing Grey Squirrel over Silver Mink loomed tantalisingly before me.But it was only for a brief and fleeting moment before I took out my phone to type in the names and numbers that formed the colour codes of the fourth (and final) revision to the paint colours list that I would send K.C.; and hit "send".ignatius@sph.com.sg存倉
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