Aegean Olive

Benjamin Moore describes Aegean Olive as 'an earthy green warmed by rich brown undertones.' It is number 1491 in the brand's Classics Color Collection.

The brand's coordinating colors for it are Horizon 1478, Mount Saint Anne 1565, Gray Mist 962 and Serengeti Sand 2164-40. Those are the pairings Benjamin Moore itself stands behind, and the first place to start if you are building a palette around it.

One discrepancy worth knowing: some third-party paint sites list Aegean Olive's LRV as 9.59, while Benjamin Moore's own page gives 11.54. We use the brand's figure. We could not establish which is current or why they differ.

Light reflectance value runs from 0 (black, absorbing everything) to 100 (a perfect white). At 11.54, Aegean Olive sits firmly in dark-color territory, in the same band as many navies and charcoals.

In practice that means the wall gives back very little light. It will not brighten a room. In a space with limited daylight, expect the brown in it to come forward and the color to read noticeably darker than a small chip suggests. Lighter coordinating colors on the ceiling or trim are what keep a room painted in it from feeling closed in, unless closed in is the point.

LRV measures brightness only. It does not tell you how the brown and green balance against your floors, so sample it in the actual room.

The five rooms on this page are by Samantha Fischer Studio, photographed by Nathan Schroder: two bedrooms, two entryways and a hallway. All five are rooms people pass through or sleep in rather than work in, which is where a color this dark is most commonly used.

The one editorial mention we found is from Brick & Batten, an exterior design firm, which in a post on 2022 color trends called it 'a beautiful deep earth tone green' and said it expected to use Aegean Olive 'as a base color' in its renderings.

We could not find an independent designer or color-consultant review of Aegean Olive: no published account of how it behaves in north versus south light, which whites it fights with, or where it disappoints. Everything above comes from Benjamin Moore's data, one exterior designer's trend note, and the rooms on this page.

The practical advice is the same as for any dark color: paint two large sample boards, move them between the darkest and brightest walls over a full day, and look at them at night under your own bulbs. If you have used Aegean Olive and can tell us how it behaved, we would like to hear from you.