The Color Digest · Compare
Settled, side by side
Moonlight
Benjamin Moore · 2020-60
The yellow that lights a room from inside
Dead Salmon
Farrow & Ball · No. 28
Not dead, just resting
In real rooms
Every room, each colorMoonlight
1 roomThe difference
Read from the numbersMoonlight is the lighter of the two at LRV 83.37, 48.4 points above Dead Salmon at LRV 35. Both read warm. Moonlight is a yellows, Dead Salmon a neutrals. For a whole room, Moonlight is the safer, more forgiving choice thanks to its higher LRV, while Dead Salmon is the bolder pick.
How they read
In their own wordsMoonlight — now sold by Benjamin Moore under the name Sicilian Lemon, same number 2020-60 — is a pale, clear butter yellow with an LRV of 83. It is light enough to behave like a tinted white in a bright room and cheerful enough to make a north-facing one feel as if the sun came out.
Dead 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.