Half Pearl Lusta™ Y95-012-089 Resene Double Alabaster Resene Parchment | 5 Deciphering whites Whatever type of white you’re after, here’s how to make the best use of the Resene Whites & Neutrals collection by understanding the paint codes. Beneath each paint swatch is not just the name but a code which starts with a letter. That tells you the base colour of the paint. So Y is for yellow, BR for brown, G for green and N is for neutral (which means black, or rather grey once you put it with white). Some paint colours cross from one base to another depending on their strength, for example, Resene Half Pearl Lusta’s code starts with a Y but Resene Quarter Pearl Lusta starts with a G. The science of paint is intriguing. The last three numbers of the colour code tell you where the colour sits on the colour wheel. Imagine red is at 0, then it moves into orange and yellow; green is at 180 then on it goes through blue and purple. So if you have two similar colours and one has 020 on the end and one has 180, this tells you that the 020 one is closer to the red part of the spectrum and the 180 one is closer to the greens. This is important with off-whites, as it’s the subtle undertones that you notice when they are used in a room.