The Color Digest · Compare
Settled, side by side
Moonlight
Benjamin Moore · 2020-60
The yellow that lights a room from inside
Sudbury Yellow
Farrow & Ball · No. 51
The yellow from the staircase at Sudbury Hall
In real rooms
Every room, each colorMoonlight
1 roomThe difference
Read from the numbersBoth read warm. Both belong to the yellows family.
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.
Sudbury Yellow is an ochre-gold named for the staircase at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire — a yellow with enough earth in it to feel historic rather than sunny. It is warm, saturated and surprisingly easy to live with, because the ochre keeps it from ever turning acid.