RAL Design System plus — hue 110
At saturation 02 a colour lies so close to the grey axis that at first glance it is read as white or as light grey. 110 96 02 (Laundry white) is the extreme case, with an LRV of 89.7. That is not a leftover in the range but a working area in its own right. With whites in particular, a minute colour direction decides how a space sits, and a green direction is the quietest there is — it cools without turning blue and ages less visibly than a yellow direction, which yellows along with the binder.
On large surfaces, ceilings and system walls that is exactly what you want. A purely neutral white always picks up colour next to warm timber or next to brick; a white with a trace of green compensates for that contrast instead of succumbing to it. Choosing grey or white is always choosing in relation to something, and this is one of the few places in the system where you can dose that to within two hundredths of saturation.
With an LRV range from 6.3 to 89.7, this hue spans more light reflectance than most. That is useful where accessibility requirements prescribe a minimum difference in light reflectance value between surfaces with a safety function — frames, doors, stair treads, guidance lines. Within a single hue you get the full difference here, from 110 20 10 (Metal construction green) up to the whites. The colour scheme stays one colour and the calculation stays clean.
All 47 colours in this group
More about hue 110
At the other end stands 110 70 77 (Marker green): saturation 77, the highest of this hue and almost the highest that green reaches anywhere in the system. It is the colour of the highlighter pen, and that is precisely both its problem and its use. On a small surface — a handle, a marking, a detail that has to be found — it works. On a large surface the eye keeps correcting a saturated green and it becomes restless; the usable limit lies lower for green than for warm colours.
Between those extremes lies the usable middle: 110 50 55 (Flag green), 110 60 60 (Woodruff green) and 110 70 50 (Delaunay green) for accents and signage, 110 80 30 (Springtide green) and 110 85 20 (Kohlrabi green) for wall work where the colour has to be carried rather than noticed.
With an average hue angle of 115 degrees, 110 sits in the cool half — warmth peaks at around 50 degrees — but the yellow component keeps the colour from turning chilly. In practice this hue therefore behaves differently from a pure green: it cools a space less than its angle suggests, as long as the saturation stays low. Above C\* 40 that advantage disappears and the colour starts to behave as a full green.
The weakly saturated shades cannot be told apart on a screen, and barely on a fan-deck sample. With whites and near-whites, size is decisive: lay the candidates side by side on A4 next to the material, under the light of the final situation, and approve on the A4 colour samples as the colour standard.
Technical data
Hue: 110 · Shades: 47 · Lightness: L\* 20–96 · Saturation: C\* 02–77 · Lab values: per shade on the colour page · LRV: 6.3 to 89.7 · Included in: RAL D4 A4 colour samples (colour standard), RAL D2 fan deck, RAL D3 colour book, RAL D4 atlas, RAL D6 and D8 boxes
Neighbouring hues
RAL Design 100, RAL Design 120
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