No, i'm not talking about those colored condoms pervert. Do some paint colors make a car look bigger or smaller? Gloss or dull do anything? Some of you study these things, any input?
yes color of a car affects the way the eye percieves size and shape of an object.. for example take a stock bodied shoebox ford...... paint it black looks very slim and straight for a big round car........ now take that same car and paint it white and all of the sudden the car looks like an egg big and bubbly. as far as sheen on a paint job i really havent noticed any effect on the way it makes the car look so far.
Dark colors along the lower portion of a vehicle helps create the illusion that it sits lower. Black helps to make door gaps look tighter too. Not sure about colors making cars look bigger but metallics can effectively accentuate a vehicles body lines.
In addition to the other comments regarding the dark colors, it also depends on what body style you are considering to paint. Some colors are complimentary to certain shapes. Color breaks (two tone or graphics) also impact the proportion of the shape. Some cars work well with high contrast, others are better suited to harmonized tone on tone colors or similar value colors.
Dark colors actually add to the appearance of m*** (i.e., bigger). For example, Spence Murray's 1949 Chevy was initially painted yellow with a purple top, but the dark top virtually negated the effect of the mild top chop. "My first radical custom was anything but, in the eyes of fellow customizers", Spence was quoted. "It looked like a stocker, until the shaved drip rails were spotted, and I was laughed out of the parking lot." A repaint quickly remedied the situation. In Art 101 terms, dark colors advance, light colors recede. ( Reverse of what you might think.)
just like a heavy person wears black to slim dow, same thing with car. lighter colors more perceived bulk, darker colors, smaller.
And there you have it, the same opinions on both ends of the shade and color spectrum! Dark is small or BIG. Light is BIG or small.
I was thinking K-Y colors and clears always made them bigger..... even maybe the Sensual Sensations line......
I agree. But it is not so cut and dry as dark vs light either. When viewing a car, it is all about reflection from the surface. We read the light reflected into the surface as well as surfaces reflected in a surface. When the color is dark, the reflected surfaces are more legible there fore breaking up the forms, so it looks 'leaner in appearance' the lighter color diffuse the reflections so we read more 'visual m***'. As an example take a side view of an early Riviera in black, you read the sky tones in contrast with ground tones and the crisp features of the surfaces are broken up in a linear fashion with all of the reflections. Take the same body style in white or yellow, the crisp lines are there but are less delineated due to the lack of contrast, we read more 'visual m***'. This same principle applies to graphics layout, that is why some graphics work better than others. Does that make sense?
I don't have a scanner, but here is a photo from a 1979 Spence Murray article en***led "The Summer of Fifty". The caption in the corner reads: "And there you are: box-stock but chopped. Dark-on-light paint scheme optically negated the Chevy's low appearance, though. 'What fools we mortals be.' " Here is the car after re-paint. Spence goes on to say: "Trouble was, not having an artistic bent, I hadn't realized that a dark color above a lighter one had just the opposite effect of a chop job! The top now looked high and the body thin. It's an optical trick, and one that virtually cancelled out all the hard work." If you still call BS, well, grab a s**** and help yourself! (P.S. For those not in the know, the above Chevy is the one Spence drove cross-country in 1952, spawning the historic "6000 Miles in a Custom" Hop Up Magazine article, and sparking his career as founding editor of "Rod and Custom" Magazine. His next personal project was what was to become known as the Rod and Custom Dream Truck. But that's a whole other story. No BS!)
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