The Color Digest · Compare
Settled, side by side
Dead Salmon
Farrow & Ball · No. 28
Not dead, just resting
Late Wheat
Benjamin Moore · CC-240
Straw, not butter
In real rooms
Every room, each colorThe difference
Read from the numbersLate Wheat is the lighter of the two at LRV 47.41, 12.4 points above Dead Salmon at LRV 35. Both read warm. Dead Salmon is a neutrals, Late Wheat a yellows. For a whole room, Late Wheat is the safer, more forgiving choice thanks to its higher LRV, while Dead Salmon is the bolder pick.
How they read
In their own wordsDead Salmon takes its name from an eighteenth-century decorating bill at Kedleston Hall, where 'dead' meant matte rather than deceased. The color is a muddy pink-beige — salmon left in the sun until only the memory of pink remains. At LRV 35 it is a real mid-tone with unusual depth for a neutral.
Late Wheat is a muted golden yellow with enough tan and green in it to stay quiet — the color of a field in September rather than a lemon. At LRV 47 it sits mid-tone, so on cabinetry it reads as a real color without ever shouting, and it has none of the acidity that makes most yellows hard to live with.