Home and belongings color inventory
Every surface and belonging in the rooms you are working on: whether it stays, how it looks in the four attributes, and which way it leans beside a named neighbor.
Surfaces and belongings
Status is the three-way sort from Module 1: stays (the plan works with it), can change (the plan may touch it), undecided (a question and a date; put them in the notes). The lean column is empty until Module 3, and it is always relative to the neighbor named in the next column. The "approximate screen swatch" is optional and exists so the printed sheet has a visual reminder beside the row; it is not the color of the thing.
How to use this sheet
- One row per thing, large things first. Floor, walls, ceiling, trim, cabinets, counters, tile, then the sofa, the rug, the curtains, the furniture, the art. Skip small objects unless they will matter to the palette (a collection on display can).
- Fill the columns in course order. Module 1: room, item, kind, status, size, photo. Module 2: the description, in the four attributes rather than color names ("yellow-orange family · light value · moderately strong chroma · warmer than the trim"). Module 3: lean and "compared against." Later modules read from here and rarely write to it.
- Write the lean as a relationship. "Leans warm/yellow" means nothing on its own; "leans warm/yellow, compared against the mid-gray chip, by the living-room window, 11 a.m." is an observation. If you cannot decide, choose "undecided" in the lean column rather than guessing.
- Undecided rows carry a question. Put the question and the date you expect to answer it in the notes ("ask landlord by Friday"; "compare beside chips, Module 3"; "recovering quote this month"). When the answer comes, change the status and keep the note.
- Photo references point to your own photos. "Photo 12, phone" or "album: Larkin, kitchen 3." Photos are for finding the thing again, not for judging its color.
- Renters: the walls are rows. If you cannot paint, the walls are your largest fixed element; give them a row per room, status "stays," and describe them as carefully as a floor.
- Renovating: new finishes are rows the moment they are chosen. A counter that is ordered but not yet installed is "stays"; describe it from its sample and note "from sample, not yet installed."
- Keep rows you no longer need. If something leaves the home, change its status and add a note rather than deleting it; the reasoning is part of the record. The example rows can be loaded and removed at any time.
The example rows are Larkin Street: Dana and Priya's 1970s first home with honey-toned oak floors, beige 1990s tile, an olive-green secondhand sofa and off-white trim. The descriptions and leans are the ones they wrote in Modules 2 and 3, including one row they could not decide and one they left for later. The screen swatches beside them are the course's approximations, not the colors of any real floor or tile. Load the rows to see the shape of a complete record, then remove them when your own rows are in.
A description in this sheet is an observation made in one light at one hour; it is not a property of the material, and it may read differently at the hours you use the room (Module 4). The lean column is relative to the neighbor named in the "compared against" column, never a fact about the item on its own; the same floor can lean yellow beside one chip and orange beside another. The swatch is a screen reminder for the printed page and cannot be used to match a paint or judge an undertone; the record is the words.