The Color Digest · Compare
Settled, side by side
Calke Green
Farrow & Ball · No. 34
The green from the breakfast room at Calke Abbey
Aegean Olive
Benjamin Moore · 1491
Olive with the volume turned all the way down
In real rooms
Every room, each colorThe difference
Read from the numbersCalke Green is the lighter of the two at LRV 22, 10.5 points above Aegean Olive at LRV 11.54. Calke Green leans neutral where Aegean Olive reads warm. Both belong to the greens family. For a whole room, Calke Green is the safer, more forgiving choice thanks to its higher LRV, while Aegean Olive is the bolder pick.
How they read
In their own wordsCalke Green takes its name from the breakfast room at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire, and it has the settled, slightly faded quality of a color that has been on a wall for two hundred years. It is a mid-tone green with enough grey to stay calm and enough yellow to stay warm — the green of gardens rather than forests.
Aegean Olive is a deep, greyed olive that sits closer to bronze and khaki than to anything leafy. With an LRV just under 12 it behaves like a dark neutral: it wraps a room, dissolves corners and makes cane, rattan and aged brass look expensive. It is the green you choose when you do not want the room to read as green.