When a 19 year old tells you his truck color is ‘Grandpa Green’ what comes into my 60 something mind is dusty and slow!
This is Color Week 50 and we are about to discover the color dubbed ‘Grandpa Green’.
The process of coming up with color names can be surprisingly rigorous, involving color specialists, marketing pros, and lawyers—always lawyers.
Consumer Reports
When I look at the colors on my watercolor palette there are ancient names such as Ultramarine or Burnt Sienna, color names that describe the source. Paynes Gray or Hookers Green identified by the founder of the color. More modern color names include an identifier such as Quinacrodone or Permanent, BUT in today’s world colors need to send a message to the consumer. I read a note by a color researcher (who has a Ph.D. in color strategy) that ‘the Behr paint team considers the emotions a color name might evoke or an identification people might make with it’. We can all agree Grandpa Green is not on anyones paint naming short list but it is ’emotional’.
What I thought of as Grandpa Green was a sad washed out Sage Green. At a recent dinner party I asked guests to identify what they thought of as Grandpa Green and an odd thing happened…. a Millennial said light green, 2 ‘real’ grandparents said blue-greenish, someone threw in ‘it’s green’! So here is the truck and my color match. I would call it preppy green, leaning blue green.
If you are ever curious as to an automotive color, here is the place to go paintscratch.com/
Can you believe there is a book named Grandpa Green.
Isn’t color wonderful!
Own Your Encore 
4 responses to “What Color is Grandpa Green”
The first thing I thought of when I started to read your email was memories of riding around with Ed in his old green plymouth… We had a lot of adventures in that car! It wasn’t Grandpa Green but it was a nice shade!
OSM
Nice, I will need to look up that color.
Yes indeed! Dark Tourmaline Metallic parenthetically
Dark Tourmaline Metallic is the color match for the truck, but something tells me that the color of the truck will continue to be referred to as “Grandpa Green”.