Learn about Plan-Home.com

Plan-Home helps you explore and choose the right paint color with handpicked real interior photo collections and all the technical information you need. Since 2021, we've helped hundreds of thousands of people decide on the best shades for their homes.

The story

Behind the scenes of Plan-Home is the family team of interior designer Victoria and contractor Robert. We have 8 years of experience in apartment renovations, including painting.

We know firsthand how tough and time-consuming it can be to find the perfect colors and references for wall paint. We've seen how our clients find it hard to express their vision, which can make the process even more complex.

During conversations with our clients, we discovered that the best way to showcase a wall color is through real-life photos of interiors featuring that color. At first, we simply collected photos of various paint colors in a shared cloud folder for our clients.

As our collection grew, we realized this “digital tool” could be incredibly valuable to other homeowners, interior designers or contractors.
Plan-Home evolved from a personal tool into a public resource, helping others navigate the overwhelming process of selecting the perfect hues for their spaces.

Our Principles

We have agreed that in our color reviews, we would provide only science-based and practically proven information about paint colors. Therefore, while studying every technical parameter and aspect of the paint, we took a deep dive into studying the manufacturers' claimed data, as well as the theoretical and scientific aspect of this data.

Color Matching / Equivalents

Clients often came to us with completed design projects where wall paint colors were specified, for example, in the NCS (Natural Colour System) palette, and it was necessary to quickly and accurately find a matching color from another brand, such as Sherwin-Williams or Benjamin Moore.

The color equivalents search among other brands came as a logical improvement to the project. We have developed our own algorithm. It double checks matches using CIEDE2000 Color Difference(Lightness, Chroma, hue) and Euclidean distance applied to HSL color model (hue, saturation, brightness).

Light Reflectance Value (LRV)

LRV values are primarily taken from paint manufacturers, as they measure it when a new shade is put into mass production. If we work with any of the colors in the collection, we test it additionally with Cromocon LRV Meter.

Undertones

Our algorithms can accurately identify the undertone of a paint color by isolating the pure hue and removing any tints, tones, or shades. Our method has been shown to be more precise than traditional techniques that rely on a white paper background to define undertones.

Cool or Warm shade

Figuring out the color temperature our algorithm determines the degree of Hue, percentages of Saturation, and Lightness. The algorithm then maps the color's location on the Color Wheel and, depending on this, calculates whether the color is warm or cool.

Coordinating colors

To calculate Monochromatic, Analogous, Complementary, and Triadic color schemes we've developed an algorithm that determines the specific angle and location of the color on the color wheel and according to color theory defines the necessary angles and distances for the opposite scheme colors.
Then the previously described color matching algorithm comes into play and selects the closest color matches in our database.

Color Comparison

When comparing two colors, we provide the most important information in a concise form. Our algorithm automatically compares the significant differences between two colors and highlights them, i.e. one color is darker than the other due to Value (from the Hue, Saturation, Value model) and LRV percent. Also, it is more yellow, less saturated, and has a cool temperature.