Field notes 4 MIN READ
Choosing the line colour
Four colours, and the choice is less about taste than about what the print has to do on the wall it is going on.
There are four, deliberately. A full colour picker sounds generous and mostly produces prints that fail on the wall.
Orange
The default and the one most people should take.
It has the highest contrast against both papers, it is the only colour that reads properly at 30×40 from across a room, and it carries the association that most people bringing a route here already have.
If the print is going anywhere it will be seen from more than two metres, this is the answer.
Ink
Nearly black, on natural paper. The quietest option.
This is the one for a room where nothing is allowed to shout — an office, a shared space, a wall that already has a lot on it. Up close it is as legible as orange. From across the room it recedes into a graphic rather than announcing itself.
It is also the best choice for a gift where you do not know the room.
Amber
Warm, and it only works on dark paper. On natural stock it is too close to the paper's own warmth and the line goes soft.
On near-black it is the most attractive combination we print. It is not the most legible — that is still orange — but at 50×70 and above there is enough line to carry it.
Paper
The line in the paper colour, on dark stock. An inversion.
This is the subtlest print of the four and the one that most rewards being close to it. In a dim room it barely reads at all, which is either the point or a mistake depending on where it is going.
The rule underneath all four
The line is thin. That is what makes it a drawing rather than a diagram, and it means contrast does more work than hue. Whichever colour you pick, check it against the paper rather than against the wall — the paper is what it will be sitting on for the next ten years, and the wall might be repainted.
Questions people actually ask
- Which colour reads best from a distance?
- Orange, comfortably. It has the most contrast against both natural and dark stock and it is the only one that reads across a room at 30×40.
- Does the line colour work on dark paper?
- Yes, and it is where dark paper earns itself — a bright line on near-black glows in a way it cannot on white.
- Can I match the colour to a room?
- Within reason. There are four options rather than a colour picker, because a line that matches a cushion is a line that disappears when the cushion is replaced.
- Does colour affect the price?
- No. Every colour is the same ink coverage and the same price.
YOURS, FROM A FILE, IN 90 SECONDS
One effort. One sheet of paper.
Bring the file and every choice is yours: treatment, colour, which numbers come along. Museum-grade 250 gsm matte, printed in Denmark, shipped in a tube with a nail taped inside.
Print it. FROM 349 kr