Leather Finishes - Color Coats
A quick term definition:
Hue - The term most commonly associated with color. It's the name you'd
associate with the color. Looking at a tree, you'd say "green". At
an orange, you'd say "orange", etc.
Value - The measure of how light or dark a color is. When you say, "that's
dark green", "dark" is a measure of the color's value. White has the highest value,
and black the lowest.
Chroma - The measure of how intense or pure a color is. When you say, "that's
bright red", or, "that's a muddy red", "bright" or "muddy" are a
measure of the color's chroma. A low chroma color is muddy, and a high chroma color is bright.
Some important considerations when choosing leather finish colors:
Not all colors have the same amount of coverage when applied. The amount of coverage is determined by the particulate size of the pigment. Low-chroma colors have a larger pigment size, and therefore a better coverage rate than high-chroma colors when applied in equal amounts. Here is a breakdown of ADVLeather's colors related to coverage:
| High-coverage Colors | Medium-coverage Colors | Lower-coverage Colors |
| CC-1 Black CC-2 White CC-7 Yellow Oxide CC-9 Red Oxide CC-14 HC Brown |
CC-6 Medium Yellow CC-12 Burgundy CC-8 Orange CC-10 Red |
CC-3 Blue CC-4 Green CC-5 Organic Yellow CC-11 Violet CC-13 Organic Brown |
When choosing colors, it's best to evaluate what the project outcome requires. If a leather refinishing project is a dramatic change in value, then a high-coverage color is best to use as a base for the color-match, because it will take less finish to achieve full coverage, and will have better UV stability over time.
If the project is to shift the hue of a color, but the values are similar, then lower coverage colors could be used for the color-match.
If the project is to shift the chroma of a color, but the hues and values are similar, then low-coverage colors are fine to use as the color-match base.